performance is futile



Performance is Futile is a self-portrait series exploring the intersection of chronic illness, gendered expectations, and societal performance. Styled as a sorrowful mime under harsh green and blue lighting in a basement, the series evokes themes of isolation, exhaustion, and resistance.

Created in the aftermath of a Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis and a traumatic workplace experience, the project rejects the expectation that women must keep performing through pain; smiling, working, surviving, regardless of personal or systemic suffering. Through theatrical poses, distorted expressions, and symbolic references (like jazz hands, forced smiles, and over-the-shoulder tension), the work becomes a personal and political rebellion.

This is not a cry for sympathy. It is a declaration:

I will not perform. I will exist.

Because performance; in the face of oppression, illness, and dismissal, is not strength. It’s erasure. And I refuse to disappear.