The flagellation began at 1:12 a.m.
It’s important to pinpoint the moment precisely, because it was then that Nina Arsenault’s 40 Days and 40 Nights: Working Towards a SpiritualExperience made the leap from daring to incredible, and marked it as not just one of the most astonishing things you’ll see at SummerWorks but anywhere in Toronto this year.
The transsexual performance artist, best known for The SiliconeDiaries, walks in sweeping circles inside the pop-up store at 1095 Queen St. W. which has become her kingdom until Aug. 19.
Don’t worry about not being able to find it. The red neon sign announcing “The Whore of Babalon” (in its own distinctive spelling) will let you know you’re in the right place.
The interior of the vacant shop is partly hidden from the view of passersby by a screen arrangement. Audience members enter, taking chairs or spots on the floor if the chairs are full.
And then there’s Nina. She drags an exercise bicycle in front of a giant full-length mirror, drops her gown to the floor, puts on a wig made of equal parts black hair and webbing, turning her into a true sister of Manuel Puig’s Spider Woman, before, stark naked, she climbs onto the bike and starts pedaling as if the hound of hell was pursuing her.
Despite the nudity, there is nothing erotic about this performance.
The sound system from her computer provides diva-styled doses of grand opera while she drives herself faster and faster, a Valkyrie on her own predestined ride toward the perfect Valhalla of cosmetic surgery, proud, almost triumphant.
And then you see it. The black corded lash resting on the handle bars — the kind beloved of masochistic monks in literature.
She raises it and strikes her back. The sound is real. The marks she leaves on her skin are also unmistakable. Only the fact that Arsenault shows no pain in her face makes you doubt it’s really happening.
It continues 45 more minutes. She doesn’t whip herself constantly, but often enough that you can see the welts rising through the glistening sweat and hear the involuntary, animal-like sounds of hurt that pass unbidden through her lips.
When it’s over, she dresses in virginal white, picks up one of the dozens of lit candles that fill the room and sinks onto the floor in meditation.
This is no ordinary theatrical presentation and Arsenault is no ordinary performer. After eight years and 60 cosmetic surgeries, she became a star on the Toronto theatre scene, but finally felt that enough was enough and the surgery must stop.
Then she found her features starting to blur, look old, grow unattractive and so she prepared for the grandest of all her quests, merging psychosexual spirituality with a lust for the surgeon’s knife.
A Dante who wanted to become his own Beatrice, living a combined Paradiso, Purgatorio and Inferno in a plastic surgery clinic in Guadalajara this past April. She stayed awake during the long and incredibly painful procedure so she could observe and remember it all.
She shares that with us in an earlier part of the evening’s proceedings, an hour-long monologue she calls “The Ecstasy of Nina Arsenault,” a work that everyone sitting in the sage- and incense-scented room listens to with a mixture of fascination and horror.
When Arsenault describes the bliss she feels as the surgeon’s scalpel carves pockets of fat out of her skin, she sounds like Frank Wedekind’s Lulu, the woman who could only truly find pleasure under the knife of Jack the Ripper.
No wonder that when the process was over, Arsenault felt the need for something profoundly transformative. And so she prepared 40 Days and 40Nights.
For 29 days before the 11 days of SummerWorks, she went through periods of celibacy, fasting and sleep deprivation to prepare herself for the eight hours a night from sundown till sunrise she spends with the public.
Part of the event is truly an art installation, with photographs she has created in collaboration with favoured artists, including Bruce LaBruce, Istvan Kantor and Jordan Tannahillor; and the sculpture she created out of her discarded silicone implants.
Visitors to the space will see Arsenault in moments of repose, or times when she willingly exchanges confidences with those who come to share or seek direction from her.
But as the night closes, she strips naked once more, puts on a pig’s head mask and fills the room with a beat that sounds like crystal meth set to music.
She throws herself into a near automatonic state and scrawls poetry on the walls, filling them with sentiments like “The question isn’t ‘Is it working?’ but ‘How far can it go?’”
Arsenault is asking that question every night. If you’ve got the courage, you should join her.
Nina Arsenault’s 40 Days and 40 Nights: Working Towards a Spiritual Experience can be viewed nightly until Aug. 19, from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., at 1095 Queen St. W. Go to www.summerworks.ca for tickets and information about all the shows being presented.
It’s important to pinpoint the moment precisely, because it was then that Nina Arsenault’s 40 Days and 40 Nights: Working Towards a SpiritualExperience made the leap from daring to incredible, and marked it as not just one of the most astonishing things you’ll see at SummerWorks but anywhere in Toronto this year.
The transsexual performance artist, best known for The SiliconeDiaries, walks in sweeping circles inside the pop-up store at 1095 Queen St. W. which has become her kingdom until Aug. 19.
Don’t worry about not being able to find it. The red neon sign announcing “The Whore of Babalon” (in its own distinctive spelling) will let you know you’re in the right place.
The interior of the vacant shop is partly hidden from the view of passersby by a screen arrangement. Audience members enter, taking chairs or spots on the floor if the chairs are full.
And then there’s Nina. She drags an exercise bicycle in front of a giant full-length mirror, drops her gown to the floor, puts on a wig made of equal parts black hair and webbing, turning her into a true sister of Manuel Puig’s Spider Woman, before, stark naked, she climbs onto the bike and starts pedaling as if the hound of hell was pursuing her.
Despite the nudity, there is nothing erotic about this performance.
The sound system from her computer provides diva-styled doses of grand opera while she drives herself faster and faster, a Valkyrie on her own predestined ride toward the perfect Valhalla of cosmetic surgery, proud, almost triumphant.
And then you see it. The black corded lash resting on the handle bars — the kind beloved of masochistic monks in literature.
She raises it and strikes her back. The sound is real. The marks she leaves on her skin are also unmistakable. Only the fact that Arsenault shows no pain in her face makes you doubt it’s really happening.
It continues 45 more minutes. She doesn’t whip herself constantly, but often enough that you can see the welts rising through the glistening sweat and hear the involuntary, animal-like sounds of hurt that pass unbidden through her lips.
When it’s over, she dresses in virginal white, picks up one of the dozens of lit candles that fill the room and sinks onto the floor in meditation.
This is no ordinary theatrical presentation and Arsenault is no ordinary performer. After eight years and 60 cosmetic surgeries, she became a star on the Toronto theatre scene, but finally felt that enough was enough and the surgery must stop.
Then she found her features starting to blur, look old, grow unattractive and so she prepared for the grandest of all her quests, merging psychosexual spirituality with a lust for the surgeon’s knife.
A Dante who wanted to become his own Beatrice, living a combined Paradiso, Purgatorio and Inferno in a plastic surgery clinic in Guadalajara this past April. She stayed awake during the long and incredibly painful procedure so she could observe and remember it all.
She shares that with us in an earlier part of the evening’s proceedings, an hour-long monologue she calls “The Ecstasy of Nina Arsenault,” a work that everyone sitting in the sage- and incense-scented room listens to with a mixture of fascination and horror.
When Arsenault describes the bliss she feels as the surgeon’s scalpel carves pockets of fat out of her skin, she sounds like Frank Wedekind’s Lulu, the woman who could only truly find pleasure under the knife of Jack the Ripper.
No wonder that when the process was over, Arsenault felt the need for something profoundly transformative. And so she prepared 40 Days and 40Nights.
For 29 days before the 11 days of SummerWorks, she went through periods of celibacy, fasting and sleep deprivation to prepare herself for the eight hours a night from sundown till sunrise she spends with the public.
Part of the event is truly an art installation, with photographs she has created in collaboration with favoured artists, including Bruce LaBruce, Istvan Kantor and Jordan Tannahillor; and the sculpture she created out of her discarded silicone implants.
Visitors to the space will see Arsenault in moments of repose, or times when she willingly exchanges confidences with those who come to share or seek direction from her.
But as the night closes, she strips naked once more, puts on a pig’s head mask and fills the room with a beat that sounds like crystal meth set to music.
She throws herself into a near automatonic state and scrawls poetry on the walls, filling them with sentiments like “The question isn’t ‘Is it working?’ but ‘How far can it go?’”
Arsenault is asking that question every night. If you’ve got the courage, you should join her.
Nina Arsenault’s 40 Days and 40 Nights: Working Towards a Spiritual Experience can be viewed nightly until Aug. 19, from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., at 1095 Queen St. W. Go to www.summerworks.ca for tickets and information about all the shows being presented.
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