Mary Medusa

Description:

This performance by Shawna Dempsey and Lori Millan explores Medusa as both icon and myth to examine cultural fears surrounding powerful women. The performance reflects on society as a consumptive machine that sustains itself by upholding binaries of gender, race, sexuality, and class. Medusa’s ability to turn men to stone—her so-called ugliness rendered as power—becomes a lens through which the work considers how female desire is systemically vilified, pathologized, and controlled. 

Wearing a wig of plastic snakes, Dempsey delivers a monologue on appetite, desire, and power, shifting between archetypal roles through costume—from wedding dress, to kitchen apron, to power blazer. The performance is punctuated by video interludes in which Dempsey appears as Medusa’s disembodied head superimposed on classical architecture, at times in dialogue with Athena (played by Sharon Bajer). Additional interludes feature slides by Millan and Sheila Spence that show animated text layered over nudes, extending the work’s meditation on sexual politics, consumption, and morality. 

Video documentation is available upon request.