yaro shon neils suspension of belief yaro shon neils suspension of belief performance installation yaro shon neils suspension of belief performance installation yaro shon neils suspension of belief installation performance yaro shon neils suspension of belief perfomrance yaro shon neils suspension of belief performance yaro shon neils suspension of belief love at first sight yaro shon neils suspension of belief love at first sight yaro shon neils suspension of belief proverbial dresses yaro shon neils suspension of belief proverbial dresses yaro shon neils suspension of belief When engaging with a story, a temporary willing suspension of disbelief is necessary to fully connect to the events unfolding. But what happens when this suspension of disbelief is carried over into the everyday -- illusory messages being reiterated until they create a foundation for a cultural identity, until we’ve forgotten that they’re mere mythology, until they become belief? Is anything lost when we regain cognizance of the mythology that constructs so much of our cultural underpinning? Are there parts of these myths worth holding on to?

Suspension of Belief was a three-week performance-based installation during which time I deprived myself of nightly sleep in order to sleep in a dimly-lit mirrored-room built within a larger gallery. During the performance, I cycled evenly through the Proverbial Dresses, identical dresses fabricated from bed sheets. Scattered on the ground and bed were 100 Fairy Pictures, unfixed Lumen prints depicting photograms of women's underwear, images in the process of fading which viewers were allowed to take with them.

This multi-layered exhibition asked viewers to consider personal and collective roles in perpetuating the cultural myth of feminine passivity, often confounded with vulnerability.  Sleep is perhaps the most vulnerable position in which one can be. Yet this was vulnerability aggressively presented, as the viewer became fully immersed in my “passive” state upon entering an intimate space of my own construction. 

Additional Photo Credit: Jackson Goodell & Leah Regina Green