In Her First-Ever Performance, Tschabalala Self Explores a Creative Relationship in Crisis

With her painted collage Sprewell (2020), Tschabalala Self departed from her more familiar depictions of exaggerated female figures that seem to duplicate by splitting apart. In the apartment scene, a couple embrace with fragmented bodies, suggesting that we still withhold some pieces of ourselves, even in the happiest relationships. Now the artist’s newest work, a performance titled Sounding Board, brings that motif to life.
In it, a female and male actor—both of whom remain nameles