Nina Wise
Brown Paper Bubble Wrap Corona Ball Gown, 2020

paper, bubble wrap, plastic wrap, packing tape, thread
76”H x 36”W x 36”D

ARTwork statement:

Nina Wise Brown Paper Bubble Wrap Corona Ball Gown Because I am in the age range that is more vulnerable to severe effects of Covid-19, I did a great deal of my shopping for groceries and supplies this past year online. Dismayed by the amount of packaging that accompanied each delivery, I decided to collect all of it—the paper, bubble wrap, plastic and padding—and use it as the material for a ball gown. The gown is an attendant work to the memoir I am writing. The confluence of the restrictions imposed by Covid-19 (the shutting down of all theaters) and the commission from the Svane Foundation have allowed me to focus on completing my memoir. The memoir is based in large part on a performance work I did in 1984, Singing My Mother to Sleep, about my complex relationship with my brilliant, eccentric, feminist and mentally unstable mother. The memoir reveals how my mother’s influence, while in many ways damaging, led me to be an artist in a pioneering form and inspired me to have the courage to persevere through the many ups and downs this life path has presented. At the heart of the memoir is the letter my mother composed to the Board of Education requesting that her teaching credential be restored after it was rescinded due to her arrest for shoplifting. In the letter, my mother writes of the appeal of shopping and the trance of consumerism: “Dear Sirs, There is something about shopping which is like being in the world of make believe, and the immediate tangible quality of all the pretty things and baubles is more real than the more distant consequences. Now I no longer remember the tangible appeal of the articles. I knew there were too many things from too many stores, and had to refer again and again to the probation report to recall the specific things and their value.” When my mother died of cancer at 53, her wall-to-wall closets were packed with gowns—price tags still hanging from the armpits—that she had purchased on sale, imagining she might one day wear them despite the fact that she lived a very isolated life and rarely, if ever, went to balls or galas, opening nights or parties. 

Brown Paper Bubble Wrap Corona Ball Gown represents the intersection of many themes: the dreams of balls and dancing when one is confined and isolated, the yearning for love and connection that is often misdirected into consumerism, the environmental devastation caused by our waste products, and the transformation of waste into something elegant and beautiful. Like the Ark, the memoir and the gown are both vehicles of salvation. It is the act of transforming what disturbs us into what heals us that is the true medium for escaping the deluge of our suffering. The purchase of the gown includes a live (virtual or in person depending on circumstances) reading of an excerpt from the memoir.

ARTIST BIO:

Since earning her degree in Religious Studies and the Aesthetics of Movement, Nina Wise has devoted her career to developing theater and stories that address the complex relationship between body, intellect, nature, and spirit. She is the founder of Motion Theater®, a highly physical form of autobiographical improvisation. Her original works, performed in prestigious venues around the world, have won awards for playwriting, innovative design, and new theater.