The Last Gesture
The Last Gesture is an interactive artwork combining sculpture and live performance to explore touch, desire, and the reversal of the gaze. Originating from an intimate bodily impulse, the work transforms a private gesture into a public mechanism where physical contact activates light, visibility, and consciousness. By using the body as an interface, the project destabilizes conventional power relations between viewer and object, turning observation into a reciprocal and psychologically charged encounter.
Sculpture
The sculptural work reinterprets Michelangelo’s Dying Slave as a contemporary figure suspended between restraint and awakening. Cast in chromed bronze and bound by a black marble corset, the body conceals its head behind a one-way mirrored dome. When the viewer touches the silicone nipple—functioning as a pressure-sensitive switch—the internal light is activated, revealing the face and mirrored eyes that reflect the viewer’s gaze. This sequence—touch, illumination, reflection—transforms the sculpture from a passive object into an active agent that looks back, making the viewer aware of their own visibility and desire.
Performance
The accompanying performance extends the sculpture’s internal logic into time and movement. In a darkened space, a woman in a white dress circles the sculpture, shifting between gestures of worship, seduction, and rage. As the light gradually fades, her final act is to reach for and press the nipple-switch. At the exact moment the sculpture is illuminated and “awakens” her body collapses to the floor. This action externalizes the work’s underlying tensions between desire, control, and transformation, framing the sculpture as an entity that is not only interacted with, but ritually activated.