Slipping Into Slipping Away
- Chipo Chipaziwa
Western Front is pleased to present Slipping Into Slipping Away, a new thirty-minute performance by Chipo Chipaziwa. In Slipping Into Slipping Away, Chipaziwa reflects on her experiences in a front-of-house role, transforming everyday tasks—ticketing, coat check, light cleaning, and organizing materials—into performance. Across ten sequences, she engages memory, liminality, and psychoanalytic reflection, to explore the shifting power dynamics between artist and audience, and art worker and visiting public, to challenge traditional audience-performer relations.
The performance extends the research in Chipaziwa’s artist book My Mother My Home (2024), in which she remediates her past performances and interrogates the ever-pervasive white gaze on Black life, art, and being by proposing alternative methodologies of archiving performance art without photographic depictions of the body. My Mother My Home ($25) is available for pre-order online during ticket purchase. It will also be available for purchase at Western Front during the performances.
About the Artist
Chipo Chipaziwa is a performance artist based on the traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Nations (Vancouver, Canada). Her practice considers the performativity of her Black female body within the context of North America, whilst investigating the power dynamic of performer and audience.
Accessibility
Western Front’s reception is wheelchair accessible. Further details about accessibility at Western Front can be found here.
What to expect: This intimate thirty-minute performance will take place in Western Front’s foyer. While the event will be standing-room-only, seats can be made available for accessibility needs.
Acknowledgements
Presented with support from the Canada Council for Arts, BC Arts Council, and the Government of Canada. With thanks to Justine A. Chambers and Autumn Knight for their mentorship.
Western Front is a non-profit artist-run centre in Vancouver.
We acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations as traditional owners of the land upon which Western Front stands.