Performance, Masculinity, and Self-Injury

This book is an ambitious and expansive examination of the visual language of self-injury in performance art from the 1960s to the present.

Inspired by the gendered nature of discussion around self-harm, the book challenges established readings of risk-taking and self-injury in global performance practice. The interdisciplinary methodology draws from art history and sociology to provide a new critical analysis of the relationship between masculinity and self-inflicted injury. Based upon interviews with a range of artists around the world, it offers an innovative understanding of the diverse meanings behind self-injury in performance, and delves into the gendered coding of self-harming bodies. Individual chapters examine the work of Ron Athey, Günter Brus, Wafaa Bilal, Franko B, André Stitt, Pyotr Pavlensky, and Yang Zhichao, offering a new perspective on the forms and functions of self-injury in performance art.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, performance studies, gender studies, and cultural studies.

Lucy Weir is Chancellor’s Fellow in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker. She is the author of Pina Bausch’s Dance Theatre (2018), and co-editor of Performance in a Pandemic (with Laura Bissell, Routledge, 2021).