Performance art stretches bounds of senior thesis

PHOTO: FRANK WOJCIECHOWSKI

Published Jan. 21, 2016

Polly Korbel ’13’s visual-arts thesis was a work of performance art. She lived in the Lewis Center’s Lucas Gallery for a week in March, eating rice, drinking water, and throwing a ball against a wall for hours at a time. She used a sledgehammer to break up concrete, was wrapped in rope, and had observers nail her hair to the wall. Finally, charcoal smudged her body as she held a series of poses outdoors in the snow. She hoped that observers would empathize with her pain. Korbel, who is writing another thesis on social inequality for the politics department, said: “I can’t experience what it’s like to be in poverty or to be ostracized, or to be a minority. ... But I do every day wake up here and try to realize what I’m doing to harm others. My body — and who I am here physically — is supposed to be representing those who have no voice and who are not heard.”