Dafna Maimon’s body-feeling worlds
When we arrive at Dafna Maimon’s spacious studio, she makes room for us with a big smile and nimble movements among the peculiar creatures that populate the room: on the drawings on the wall, billowing and bulging forms crowd in, complete with eyes and other body parts; in the middle of the room, a giant belly that looks like a pillow is enthroned; and on a table, knobbly toes are lined up that look as if they were made of stone. Everywhere, objects, costumes, and tools seemingly hang, lie, and wait to be tried out and touched. But painting and sculpture are just the beginning. Dafna tells us that she also works a lot with film and performance. She shows us a clip from a film that alternates between a woman with a toothache and the inside of the aching tooth. The inhabitants of the tooth – caries bacteria, played by humans – have to watch out for the giant toothpick that threatens their home.
It quickly becomes clear that the human body plays an important role in Dafna’s art. But the artist is not primarily concerned with reproducing body parts true to reality – even if the huge belly already looks very real except for its size. Rather, Dafna tries to explore and play with the relationship between our bodies and our thoughts and feelings through her art. For example, this can be a memory of a physical feeling or our emotional relationship to different parts of the body. For example, Dafna finds it totally fascinating that many people are ashamed of certain body parts. Often these are breasts or other private parts, for example, but feet and toes are also often associated with shame. The disgusted expression on our faces shows how well we can understand this: Our toes are nobody's business! Dafna smiles and notes that this feeling is not just there, but often learned. After all, we're told from an early age that feet belong in socks and, best of all, shoes! Which body parts are considered disgusting or "abnormal" varies from culture to culture. Dafna herself finds feet beautiful and important, after all they carry us around the world and connect us with our surroundings. However, since toes in particular are a sensitive topic, she knows her close friends' feet very well because she has a close relationship of trust with them. She has used this knowledge as an occasion for a performance in which barefoot women sing about toes and the visitors are served drinks from toe-shaped cups (that's what the toes on the table are for, they are hollow inside!).
In addition to performances, objects, films and drawings, Dafna also likes to make costumes, which are lined up on a clothes rail in her studio. This particular art form seems very fitting to us, after all, it connects very directly with the body. The costumes often arise from a reflection on the fact that not only do physical sensations such as pain or relaxation trigger certain feelings, but also, conversely, our psychological state has an influence on how we feel about our body: For example, some people get headaches or backaches when they are sad or stressed. Dafna imagines what these feelings might look like and tries to make them visible with her costumes.
To bring us a little closer to the idea of our own bodies, Dafna spreads out a huge red carpet for us with sweeping gestures and hands us sponges, which we dip into water. We observe how quickly the consistency of the material changes: The sponges soak up, become large and soft. Dafna explains that the organs in our bodies are also constantly changing, stretching, widening and contracting to take things in and repel them. She asks us to close our eyes and imagine what sounds our organs might make, how they bubble and grumble, smack and whistle. As we try to imitate these sounds, a deafening sound performance emerges, which Dafna records with a recorder. We can only hope that it sounds a bit different in our real belly than it does here in the studio...
Slowly we notice how the long sitting and concentrating also affects our state of mind: A tingling and jittering spreads through the room and becomes more and more noticeable, so that we are glad to be able to let it out right away with a sprint through the stairwell into the backyard. How good that we don't have to have a guilty conscience about it – because if we've learned anything today, it’s that the body often has a mind of its own!
