Art Angel Performances

“Every angel is terrifying.” Rainer Maria Rilke
Symbols are rarely static. Weighted down by the contradictions they carry, symbols oscillate between extremes. Even beauty, as Rilke discovered shortly before his death, can turn into something horrific. “For beauty is nothing but terror’s beginning, which we scarcely manage to bear…”

www.art-angel.com

With her illuminated wings, the Art Angel is a symbol of light, but it thus also sheds light upon the darkness, upon everything that is missing in our workaday world. While wedded to the narrative of resurrection, an angel is no less the harbinger of death; its liminal status can be interpreted as a memento mori or as an injunction to seize the day while we’re still kicking. True, most people associate the imagery of angels with beauty, purity, and faith; and each Art Angel performance does indeed come to symbolize society’s longing for permanence, and perhaps for love. But the Art Angel plays with these angelic projections, questioning, wherever the Angel appears, such variable preconceptions. Whether in crowded cities, with the homeless in slums, or simply isolated with her own reflection in the mirror, the spontaneous performances in various places challenge the audience to react in a subconsciously honest way. “Have you seen an angel before?” The Art Angel reflects the dreams, but also the despair, that such an encounter can give rise to.

Again it was Rilke who noted the horrific burden of beauty we scarcely manage to bear. The heavy weight of the Art Angel’s wings symbolizes the burden we all carry in our disordered world—a world offering neither spiritual nor existential transcendence. Strictly speaking, an angel must feel imprisoned on earth; and many of those the Art Angel encounters feel equally trapped in a cage of pressures, weighed down by fear or envy or desire. With her very presence, the Art Angel confronts the here-and-now with a symbolic eternity beyond, and that forces questions upon everyone she encounters. Of course this still is a performance, and the performer is assuming a role. But with that role she curiously manages to uncover the role others may feel trapped in. “What is your dream behind the role you play in your life,” the artist asks. By answering that question, those she encounters come face to face with their own desires.