Switch On

Go on. Touch them. Slide your fingers across the cold unforgiving metal. Realise that you can’t just break away from its embrace. It’s stronger than you.

Feel the steel on your naked ankles. Now you understand why I prefer to keep you barefoot. I want you to be reminded of your status with every step you make, every time your bare sole slaps on the rough stone, every time you step on the chain with your toes.

And I want everyone else to see what you are: just a slave, a possession. An item. An accessory. A beast of burden.

As I take my first steps, barefoot and shackled, a torrent of feelings floods through me. Memories flash through my brain, all those pictures of slaves and prisoners. I used to wonder what it would feel like, fetters dangling around my ankles. Now I know.

Now I have become one of them. Another nameless, meaningless slave girl who might only earn a place in history books of the future as a picture, not a name. As an object of study by scholars.

two dancers peeing💧💧💧 on stage.

it’s : “the crying body” ,year : 2004

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1968

Acrylic on paper mounted on hardboard panel