One day performance and installation
Saturday 18 April 2pm
Marian Sandberg has an autoimmune disease which, among other symptoms, causes progressive depigmentation of the skin: vitiligo. The condition is found in around 1% of the population, and affects all racial groups. Sandberg’s feet and legs are most affected, and the shape and size of the depigmented patches will grow over time.
During Needlework, Holley Rentsch will tattoo a fine line demarcating the edges of Sandberg’s vitiligo. At the same time, Sandberg will embroider the same pattern onto cloth. As both needles trace this irregular form—one depositing ink, the other threading cotton—a record is made: registering the current state of Sandberg’s autoimmune response. The performance is structured to be repeated, perhaps yearly, at the end of summer when the loss of pigment is most visible in contrast to sun-exposed skin. Over time, the tattoo lines will reveal the progression and growth of the depigmentation, like the rings of a tree recording the passage of time.
Needlework explores the artist’s relationship with the body and immune-system. The performance, and its imagined subsequent versions, becomes a moment of growth of reflection – rather than spread and one of Taking an almost dis-interested viewpoint in which her own disease’s progress is recorded and transformed into a site of fascination and spectacle.
Sandberg’s work: explores technology and the body. Her work is often wry, addressing difficult emotion-laden themes, like infertility or chronic illness, while seeking moments of humanity and humour within technological systems that confine or shape our our experiences.
Following on from Sandberg’s 2024 performance “Data Reveal Party”, in which a seven-layered cake was cut to reveal coloured layers each represent the biological sex of the seven unused embryos after IVF, Sandberg again conceives of this performance as a “party”: a goodbye or farewell to the melanin destroyed by her own immune system. A monochrome food-platter is curated to accompany the performance.
Note, during Needlework a tattoo will be applied directly to the skin of the artist. A trigger warning is advised for people with trypanophobia and hematophobia. The tattoo will be administered by a trained and CBS-licensed tattoo artist, following appropriate safety and hygiene protocols. Audience members who may experience discomfort when viewing tattooing, needles, minor bleeding should consider this before attending or viewing the performance.
Artist statement
Skin is an interface.
It is where “self” ends, and “other” begins.
It’s the layer that sits between bodily and non-bodily systems.
Skin is programmed to respond to the sun, where exposure shifts pigment to darker shades to protect the body.
Skin is programmed to respond to injury, forming scabs and scars.
Skin is also programmed from the inside. It responds to age, shedding elasticity and thickness. It is programmed by genetics, determining how much melanin it contains, and thus how dark it appears.
It is also a surface for the immune system, for those of us who are chosen as a canvas. The immune system’s role as a programmer is to determine good from bad, right from wrong, and foreign body from self.
I have had an autoimmune disease called vitiligo for most of my adult life. It is considered a disease because my immune system wrongfully believes that the melanocytes living inside my skin are out to cause harm.
Though, much like AI, we are only fuzzily aware of the immune system’s inner workings. I have very little agency over my immune system, meaning my body is subjected to a constant slow process of erasure. This, I cannot control.
So today, I choose to collaborate with my immune system in a durational drawing which will span the rest of my life. My practice takes systems that are handed down to me, and asks what a re-writing of their algorithm can offer. Today I interface with my immune system through needle and ink as a way to reclaim agency over my skin’s appearance, and also to provoke the disease to progress further.
What you see before you is a line tattooed at the point where the disease is active. My heart-rate is monitored to show the impact the process is having on my bodily systems. But a slower drawing is also taking place. The slow death of my melanocytes, provoked by the act of tattooing, in combination with my genetic code. I plan on re-performing this piece periodically, where marks are accumulated like rings on a tree trunk, or contours of a map.
This is the immune system of an artist.
— Marian Sandberg