(Performance intervention and photographs)

Mannequin Impossible
Diane Borsato
Kingston, Ontario, 2001

Description:
I was invited to create a performance involving the engagement of objects in museums. In this piece, I borrowed a dusty 1960’s mannequin from the Royal Military College Museum and took him as his date to the formal graduation celebrations of the the RMC.  We attended parades, met military officials, spent a day in Kingston, and went to the prom.

After many adventures in town and on campus, I shared the photos and celebratory cake in a performance on the gun platform at the museum. By taking an artifact on a date, I was proposing an intimate model for engagement, and experience of objects in the museum and the larger cultural context they exist in.

(See exhibition history below.)

Exhibition History:

This work was performed for Museopathy/Empathology, curated by Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher with the Agnes Etherington Art Foundation at the Royal Military College Museum and various locations in 2001, in Kingston, Ontario.