Pink Assignment

Performed at Soho20 Chelsea Gallery as part of the Savoir-Faire 2012 performance series curated by Jenn Dierdorf, Pull Up was a socially engaged 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, inadvertently awakening the memory of Domingos da Criação, MAM Rio, 1971.

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 collective self-determination. In this performance, Ariadne’s thread takes on additional meanings as a metaphor for the labyrinthine issues knotting and unknotting belonging. 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]