ione wang

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A whore is a whore is a whore


2024-ongoing







This is a body of work which begins through an ongoing archive of makeup remover wipe “prints” that I make from my face. In these performances, I hang these images from two lines, which are pinned to my temples with needles. My face is smeared with white paint.

This is documentation from the third iteration of this performance, developed at the workshop Constellations of Critical Bodies. The hanging makeup remover wipe prints extended from this grassy lawn through the open door and into the main building where the performances were held. I lingered in this frozen tableau, buried up to my neck in the dirt. As I emerge from the ground in my high femme stilettos and lingerie, I take off my underwear and reveal my genitals to the audience, which I have shaved and decorated with mirror stickers like for a disco ball.





The name of this piece, which has occurred in several different iterations, is taken from a 1986 trial in which a Pasadena court judge dismissed charges for the violent rape of a prostitute on the grounds that, as he wrote, “a whore is a whore is a whore.” This performance seeks to render visible the imperceptible violence underneath systems of power, by letting it leak out of my body at the point of the piercing.



 
 

© 2025