Theater of Love was a 2018 photographic performance work created by artist Amanda Shank in response to Ronald de Sousa’s 1992 essay “Love as Theater.”
It has since expanded into an ongoing creative exploration at the intersection of autobiography and erotic philosophy. Works contain elements of performance, collage, autofiction and portraiture and are currently focused on artist books as a form of temporal literary theater.
LA FEELINGS,
a travel monologue in Paris“My first night in Paris I’m delirious with exhaustion before 8pm. Mid-May. New sheets. New rooms. Horses on my walls & horses on his. All these horses! You see, on one of my final mornings in Paris I will walk out my front door and towards the Butte Chaumont where a line of ponies will parade before me, so close I can reach out and brush their long tails. But for now / my first night in Paris / 2:29am / it rains. Thunder and lightning that hold me through the night. My naked body in unfamiliar sheets. And the next. Rain again. 2am again. Full moon. Post eclipse. I photograph myself beside the orchids.”
LA FEELINGS is a four-part autobiographical essay exploring desire, grief, aging and displacement set against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s June 2022 overruling of Roe v. Wade as witnessed from a prolonged stay in Paris, France.
Essay, collages: 2022
Artist book:
2023
7 x 8.5
30 pages
Hand-stitched
Limited edition of 8