Whose Reality? Performance and Whose Reality? Performance and Politics in Two Works by Claudia del Fierro

With practices that build on Allan Kaprow’s happenings, many ­performance artists today are concerned with breaking down ­boundaries between art and life, and art and audience, as they question the ­relevance of making work that does not fundamentally engage with everyday ­concerns. Critiquing classist divisions between high and low culture as well as the elitist notion of art made only for an exclusive cognoscenti, these artists aim, in various ways, to create work that is more accessible, if not more pertinent, to a larger public. 

The performance-based works by Chilean artist Claudia del Fierro suggest this approach, as evidenced by her exhibition at Optica that featured two short videos titled, respectively, Políticamente Correcto/Politically Correct (2001) and Idéntica (2000).¹ 1 - This self-titled exhibition was presented in Optica’s smaller gallery space from September 6 to October 11, 2008. Políticamente Correcto is a looped three-minute projection that signals its populist principles from the very beginning. The work is introduced by a short text written by the artist explaining that the video was shot in an industrial neighbourhood in Santiago. Del Fierro writes, “Day after day, over several weeks I attended lunch time at a garment factory, where a large number of women worked as sewing operators. . . . The little time for recreation and lunch allowed such limited interaction among them, that nobody ever noticed I did not work there.”