Pink Assignment

Performed at Soho20 Chelsea Gallery as part of the Savoir-Faire 2012 performance series curated by Jenn Dierdorf, Pull Up was a performance/installation by Pink Assignment, a collaborative duo of Claudia Sbrissa and Mariángeles Soto-Díaz. Drawing together in pink coveralls, threading their way through space with lines of pink satin ribbon, the artists created a site-specific installation connecting the outside and inside of the Soho20 gallery, negotiating formal directions to create a three-dimensional drawing in space. Onlookers were invited to participate as a sense of interconnected labor materialized in pink.

Given to Theseus to carry into the maze so that he could feel his way out, Ariadne’s thread symbolizes a path to liberation and self-determination. In this performance, Ariadne’s thread takes on additional meanings as a metaphor for the labyrinthine issues knotting and unknotting gender. Festive and inviting, the ribbon lines also suggest an ease rather than a struggle out of the labyrinth, a mode of building and reveling – not necessarily solving – the complexity of a pink maze. [photos: Debbie Rasiel]