» Hurt in here

Hurt in here was performed by Lai Dieu Ha at Nha San Studio, Hanoi, in 2011, one year after she presented Rise as part of the International Performance Art Festival IN:ACT 2010. Stripped bare of all materiality so that the body can appear in its rawest sincerity – if Rise was remembered, even criticized, for the image of the artist undressing to complete nudity, then the directive “it’s hurting here” bluntly points at the location of an agonizing, unending ache. Born out of suffocating social pressures and prejudice, Hurt in here can be seen as the following chapter of Rise. The work places side by side human flesh and pig flesh – worlds apart, yet equally fragile and vulnerable. Dieu Ha patiently layers piece after piece of pigskin over her own, pressing them with the heat of a flat iron in a futile attempt at unification and empathy. 

“The artist’s skin blistered from the ironing, forming watery bubbles, just like the pigskin when it bursts and swells. Soaking the skins in water to soften them became a way to soothe the pain faced by both. The artist enacted each scene as if performing a ritual of reverence, decisively peeling away the blistered skin from her arms and wrapping it inside the pigskins. The act of ironing thus became a final rite – an attempt to restore balance, to quiet the tensions present in that moment and sure to reverberate into the future.”* 

Within the collection of Nguyễn Art Foundation, a see-through box accompanies the video and photographs documenting the performance, containing within it the worn-down pigskins. As traces left behind from an event that has long ended, they evoke the presence and memory of what once were – the artist and her armor. Neatly arranged in the box, the blistered skins lie heavily on top of each other – mummified yet unmistakably once living. Look closely at their protein structures – keratin, elastin, collagen – and life’s presence becomes undeniable. Hurt in Here is thus an homage to a life lived meaningfully and courageously – a life that persists beyond judgment and reason. 

(Edited from text excerpts provided by the artist)

*Trung Pham. A Journey from Performance Art to Psyper Lab. Unpublished manuscript.