In my performance, "Building the future: an art talk in a beauty salon," I set out to challenge the conventional ways in which art is discussed and experienced, blending the formality of an art lecture with the unexpected context of a skincare routine in a “beauty salon”. Held at the Luca School of Arts in Brussels, this performance was my personal response to the growing frustration I felt with how contemporary art is often dissected within the rigid frameworks of institutions. By hosting an art talk during a skincare routine, I questioned how we engage with art discussions, inviting a more intimate, informal, and sensory experience.

At the core of my academic exploration has been Marcel Duchamp’s concept of retinal frustration, where Duchamp critiques art that is visually stimulating but lacks conceptual depth. This tension resonated with me in the way contemporary art discourse often favors dense theoretical analysis, but disconnects from the more emotional, tactile, or lived experiences of making and engaging with art. I wanted to preserve the familiar setting of an academic lecture, with desks and chairs, but I chose to destabilize this formality by moving freely through the audience, reshaping the standard dynamics of a talk.

The performance wasn’t merely a reiteration of my thesis, but rather an embodied enactment of the ideas I’ve been wrestling with. Before the audience even gathered, I initiated the performance by working on the balcony outside, engaging in an ongoing action of making plaster—a laborious and repetitive act. I built a small tower, adding layers of plaster each time the performance began again, metaphorically constructing and deconstructing the future I was discussing. This process wasn’t visible to the audience until I finally entered the room, symbolizing the hidden labor and preparation behind the scenes of any artistic endeavor.

The act of changing clothes during the performance—transforming from a worker to a lecturer— reflected not just the shedding of one role to take on another, but also the crossing of social boundaries. Moving from a labor-intensive, working-class identity into the more intellectual, academic persona highlighted the fluidity and sometimes uncomfortable transitions that many artists navigate, where manual labor and intellectual rigor must coexist.

One of the key objects I interacted with throughout the performance was a stack of plaster bags, which became more than just materials. They served as a pedestal, a literal platform for me to engage with. Standing on them, balancing myself precariously, I enacted the tension between the physical and the conceptual, between play and seriousness. This balancing act mirrored my own challenges as an artist, navigating the often-contradictory demands of contemporary art—the need for conceptual depth alongside the demands for marketability, visibility, and recognition.

In a playful yet meaningful moment, I applied a clay mask as part of the skincare routine—a nod to the beauty salon setting. But this gesture also carried a cleansing and preparation meaning. It was a way of exposing the backstage processes of art-making, not just the polished, final product. The mask represented the rituals of transformation that artists undergo, preparing to step into their roles, but also the idea that the line between preparation and performance is often blurred.

The setting itself, with large windows framing the urban cityscape, played into the duality of the performance. Outside, the city symbolized the external pressures of the art world—its demands for professionalism, success, and visibility—while the interior space, with its intimate, salon-like setting, represented the internal world of artistic creation, often nurtured in moments of solitude and reflection. This interplay between external and internal pressures echoed the broader conflicts many artists face between the expectations placed on them and their personal artistic journeys.

By the end of the 25-minute performance, I had managed to disrupt the conventional expectations of an art talk, while still delivering a message about how we can build the future as artists—through a combination of play, material engagement, and intellectual exploration. The beauty salon, with its associations of transformation, care, and self-reflection, became a tool to find ways to care for ourselves and our practices amidst the complex, often contradictory demands of contemporary art.

Ultimately, this performance was about breaking free—not just from the constraints of academic frameworks, but from the broader pressures of the art world that often dictate what we create and how we present it. By offering the audience a glimpse into an alternative way of constructing and discussing art, I sought to demonstrate how we can cultivate spaces that embrace both intellectual depth and playfulness, vulnerability and strength. Most importantly, I wanted to emphasize that building the future isn’t just about looking ahead—it’s about being fully present in the moment, using the tools and strategies we have now to forge new paths forward.