Teresias

Cassils is
an artist and bodybuilder who uses her exaggerated physique to intervene in
various contexts in order to interrogate systems of power and control. Her work
provides an intimate and empowering image of her body that also symbolizes the
broader efforts of the broader transgendered community dealing with body
transformation and public presentation.
The
performance Tiresias is inspired by the mythological character of the same
name. He was the blind prophet of Thebes, famous for being transformed into
a woman for seven years. Cassils wore cataract lenses to cloud her vision and
held her body against a neoclassical Greek male torso, carved out of ice, to
fit her body exactly. Throughout the event, she melted the torso with her own
body heat, enacting the gender transformation. 
She casts the myth of Tiresias as a story of endurance and
transformation, in which masculinity both freezes the body, and melts it away. 

Production and organisation: City of Women and Kapelica
Gallery.