Medium: Archival inkjet print on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Paper (framed), acrylic, coloured hairspray and body paint encased in glass jar, wooden shelf (Framed)

Year: 2020

Marla Bendini personified here as the biblical Lilith in ‘She is Every Night and Day’, extends the occasion of liminal embodiment to the daily experiences of women, trans, femme, queer and non-binary people. Seen both as so-called “bad girl” and a she-demon, Lilith is at the origin of all desire and primal nature for humans. Her rites are of pain, sex, love, contravention, and transcendence. As an archetype, Lilith is continuously unfolding, inspiring us to recognize our fears and desires in order to transform them into armaments of chaos and power and as sources of/for healing – only if we are able to honour her within us. <br></br> Her shedding of the body paint is encased in a glass jar as a relic of the performance, much like ashes in an urn, earth and flowers in a vase and birth and blood in a womb. The work honours those who have lost their lives to gender-based violence and she calls for action to eliminate continued violence endured by all women and oppressed genders worldwide. Forms of violence include direct (physical, sexual, psychological), cultural (religious, societal stigma) and structural (policies and legislation).

The work was last presented at Coda Culture’s Precious Things on November 20, 2020 (coinciding with Transgender Day of Remembrance) under the initiative Proposals for Novel Ways of Being. The exhibition of extant objects looks at how the “value” of art and artists has been called into question due to the ongoing pandemic, and how, for some artists, their methodologies and artworks have always existed at the margins of presumed “value”