{"id":579,"date":"2022-02-18T12:02:52","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T04:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pietronigro.com\/?page_id=579"},"modified":"2025-09-08T23:56:56","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T15:56:56","slug":"performance-work","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pietronigro.com\/?page_id=579","title":{"rendered":"Installations"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Frank Pietronigro’s Documents<\/a> is a time-based interactive work that was first experienced by an audience at the Diego Rivera Gallery at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1996. The work is interactive insofar as the audience is encouraged to walk on homophobic words made of salt to destroy the text with their footprints as a collective act of recuperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My intention is for the audience to confront the dilemma of breaking a taboo by walking on the art. In most museums and galleries one is told not to get too close to the art. In this case I welcome my audience to help me destroy my work as acts of loving kindness. By doing so, their footprints will become devices of recuperation as their steps on the salt deconstruct these negative signifiers. Each step democratically contributes to the ongoing development of the composition. The use value of the work is a ritual of affirmation in places of communal transition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The work begins with me kneeling on the floor, a gesture that is both erotic and humble. I then use stencils and salt to cover the floor with continuous lines of text comprised of homophobic words found in the English language. These words are tenuously structured into what I consider a “painting support,” in this case the floor. The audience shoes serve as paintbrushes and their walk through the space creates a painting through their unexpected performance collaboration. These words are also structured into our language and reinforce homophobia and the creative contribution of the viewer serve as loving acts of transformation as the viewers, not I, are truly the creators of this transitory work of art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a painter, I prepares a canvas, so to speak, as salted text on the floor. However, it is the path of the viewer, whether conscious or unconscious, that serves as the paintbrush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The words that Pietronigro used in Documents were sourced from the Oxford English Dictionary and the Dictionary of Slang. The litany of words in English is provided below. Jo\u00e3o Pedro Vale is now expanding Documents to include words in Portuguese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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