This is a selection of photographs created for Ruby Donohoe’s “An Act of Intimacy”. You can find more details on her website.
“A one-on-one participatory performance about our capacity for intimacy.
Borrowing from immersive theatre practices, participants are led to an installation space through a series of letters, site-specific prompts and audioscape. On meeting, both artist and participant step into transparent head-to-toe bodysuits. In this simultaneous state of proximity and separation, participants are invited to propose an act of connection to undertake- anything from cutting one another’s hair to napping to sitting in silence. The encounter and the pursuit of intimacy- in all its elusivity and many forms- is documented by a before-and-after portrait of the two.
Covid-19 undeniably dispels the myth of the sovereignty of the self - our interconnection is increasingly beyond doubt- and yet our survival also relies on isolation. Mirroring the paradox of simultaneous radical intimacy and radical alienation, the work invites us to reimagine the porous divide between connection and separation. “