Using text hand written on her body in black eyeliner, Heather Hawk created this street art performance to explore questions of identity.

Performed in silence with a census form stuffed in her mouth, text on the body worked in dialogue—identity categories from census, medical, and employment forms juxtaposed with text from "experts" on identity development.

The piece posed the following questions: What is the relationship between the forms we fill out and the forming of our identities? What happens when the form doesn't fit? When the meaning doesn't fit or the box doesn't exist or the label doesn't make sense, what is the impact? How do we become who we are and can we exist in this form?

(Photography: Karen Kiener, dandelionwineimages.com)

Notes: Informare was performed on a street corner in Columbus, Ohio during the Gallery Hop art event in the Short North. I stood for four hours while people gathered, gawked, talked directly to me, talked about me like I couldn’t hear, pleaded with me to speak or look at them, and even sobbed. I never anticipated what would happen when I put myself on the street with something to say, and stayed silent as part of the performance (because of course, the underlying narrative is about the way we are silenced by forms and categories that render some nonexistent, others only partly acknowledged). Columbus is a diverse city and this summer art event a popular one. I received every reaction you can imagine.

The prep for the performance was brutal. Some of the narrative, like on my face and neck, I knew right away was the right placement. But the rest of the narrative had to be written on my body in practice sessions to figure out what would fit where, and edited. I asked my mom to help (who else would sign up for this?!). We’d both stand and crouch for hours while she wrote dictated statements on my body with black eyeliner. These practice sessions lasted several hours and we had to do it three times. I learned that paper dissolves in your mouth quickly and I needed it to last for hours. I created a mouthpiece made of duct tape that I could clamp down on, and attached this to the census form wad. The day of the event, it was freezing and it had all been planned for maximum skin: a mini skirt, tube top, and flip flops. My mother did most of the body writing on the porch of my sister’s house since she lived close to my post. Then I had to get into the hatchback of my car (I’d even practiced this) so as not to smear the writing, and my mother drove me down. We made the final touches in the parking spot across from Goodale Park where a wedding was getting underway. Later the bride and her entourage visited me on the corner, discussing the martial status form on my chest.