Her/She Senses
Angela Ellsworth and TT Takemoto
1992-2003
performance, installation, photography
From 1993-2003, Ellsworth and Takemoto performed together under the collective name Her/She Senses.
Her/She Senses Misfit Attire
Angela Ellsworth and TT Takemoto
1993, live performance, Sisser Building, New Brunswick, New Jersey
1993, live performance, Black Box, New Brunswick, New Jersey
For three hours, Takemoto sharpens chopsticks in an electric pencil sharpener bound up in her hair and stabs them into her dress. Meanwhile, Ellsworth pulls the marshmallow tops off of pink Hostess Snowballs and stuffs them into her fishnet stocking. In another performance, Ellsworth clips dozens of clothespins to the flesh on her face while Takemoto eats Top Ramen noodles out of a clay pot on her head.
Her/She Senses Imag(in)ed Malady (Visual Rhymes)
Angela Ellsworth and TT Takemoto
1993-2003, photography (performance for the camera), Phoenix, Arizona and Rochester, New York
1997, Imag(in)ed Malady, single channel digital video, directed by Takemoto, 6:30 min
Imag(in)ed Malady began in December 1993 when Angela Ellsworth was diagnosed with lymphoma. This project explores the shifting emotional and psychological responses to cancer within the dynamic of a long-distance friendship and artistic relationship. It also presents a series in which documentary and staged photographs are coupled together as “visual rhymes.”
Her/She Senses Imag(in)ed Malady (Caffeine and Carotene)
Angela Ellsworth and TT Takemoto
1993-2003, photography (performance for the camera), Phoenix, Arizona and Rochester, New York
1997, Imag(in)ed Malady, single channel digital video, directed by Takemoto, 6:30 min
Imag(in)ed Malady began in December 1993 when Angela Ellsworth was diagnosed with lymphoma. This project explores the shifting emotional and psychological responses to cancer within the dynamic of a long-distance friendship and artistic relationship. It also presents a series in which documentary and staged photographs are coupled together as “visual rhymes.”
Arm’s Length
TT Takemoto
1996, live performance, photographs, and installation, Hartnett Gallery, Rochester, New Yor
1998, Arm’s Length, single channel digital video, 7 minutes
Arm’s Length is work based on an incident in which Takemoto taped five matches to their right arm and lit them. This event occurred after working intensely for fifteen months on a cancer project with Angela Ellsworth as an attempt to rhyme Angela’s chemotherapy injections. In this performance, Takemoto climbs up and down a 25-foot wall using mountain climbing equipment while boiling, slicing, and bandaging dozens of eggs as a metaphor for damaged skin. This exhibition also presents photographs and sculptural objects related to the process of burning, scarring, and healing.
Her/She Senses Caffe Lactate
Angela Ellsworth and TT Takemoto
1995, live performance and installation, Icehouse, Phoenix, Arizona
Caffe Lactate is an installation-based performance featuring over 100 pounds of espresso beans, powdered milk, fishing gear, swimming-flipper-tap-shoes, and medical equipment. For three hours, Ellsworth and Takemoto flip, flap, tap and cast amidst dry and liquid forms of coffee and milk as a peculiar form of recreational therapy related to coffee culture and medical treatments.
Her/She Senses Squeak and Clean
Angela Ellsworth and TT Takemoto
1999, live performance and installation, Barlow & Straker Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona
Sweating, suspending, soaping, squeaking and scrubbing Ellsworth and Takemoto commit various compulsive acts related to physical exertion, relaxation and beauty culture. For two hours each night Ellsworth and Takemoto perform on-going tasks with climbing gear, work out equipment and retro contraptions for pampering the body.
Her/She Senses Eroto Electric
Angela Ellsworth and TT Takemoto
2002, live performance, Chashama, New York, New York
2002, live performance, Palace Theater, Los Angeles, California
Inspired by Bernini’s Saint Teresa in Ecstasy, Eroto Electric presents a tableau vivant of ecstatic and electrifying proportions as Ellsworth and Takemoto hump and grind amidst chopsticks, light bulbs, and other objects of crass seduction. They explore the dynamics of interracial identification and lesbian desire within an erotically charged art historical framework.
Her/She Senses Whipped
Angela Ellsworth and TT Takemoto
2003, live performance, Crazy Space, Santa Monica, California
In Whipped, Michael Jackson and Madonna meet Johannes Vermeer’s Allegory of Painting. This tableau vivant explores obsessive and orgasmic technologies of pleasure as Ellsworth and Takemoto bead it and beat it to the rhythms of art making and pop music.
Her/She Senses
Performances and Exhibitions
Feel Me, Iceberg Projects, Chicago, 2019
Flophouse 3: Festival of Performance Art, with Angela Ellsworth, Crazy Space, Santa Monica, 2003
Currency 2002: An International Festival of Contemporary Performance, with Angela Ellsworth
Chashama, New York, 2002;
Full Nelson 4, with Angela Ellsworth, Palace Theater, Los Angeles, 2002;
Squeak and Clean, with Angela Ellsworth, Barlow and Straker Gallery, Phoenix, 1999;
Emerging Forms, with Angela Ellsworth, Edge Gallery, Denver, 1998;
Techne, Hartnett Gallery, Rochester, 1996;
Confronting Cancer Through Art, with Angela Ellsworth, Arthur Ross Gallery, Philadelphia, 1996;
Icehouse Retrospective, with Angela Ellsworth, Crash Arts, Icehouse, Phoenix, 1996;
Phoenix, Milk Exhibition, with Angela Ellsworth, Crash Arts, Icehouse, Phoenix, 1995;
Caffeine and Carotene, with Angela Ellsworth, Hartnett Gallery, Rochester, 1995;
Gardens of Evil, with Angela Ellsworth, CrashArts, Icehouse, Phoenix, 1994;
Art in Site 2, with Angela Ellsworth, Sisser Building, New Brunswick, 1993
For-Play, with Angela Ellsworth, Black Box, New Brunswick, 1993
Press / Publications
Jennifer Gonzalez and Tina Takemoto, “Triple Threat: Queer Feminist of Color Performance Art,” Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art Histories, ed. Amelia Jones and Erin Silver (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 294-303
Tamar Tembeck, “Auto/Pathographies: Illness (Self-)Representation, Collaboration,” Auto/Pathographies, ed. Tamar Tembeck (Sagamie edition d’art 2014), 6-21
Amy Cancelmo, “Her/She Senses: A Curator’s Interview with Angela Ellsworth and Tina Takemoto, Strange Bedfellows, exhibition catalog (2013)
Patrick Anderson, “I Feel For You,” Neoliberalism and Global Theatres, ed. Lara Nielsen and Patricia Ybarra (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 81-96
Aliza Shvarts, “Figuration and Failure, Pedagogy and Performance: Reflections Three Years Later,” Women & Performance 20.1 (2011), 155-162
Jolene Poznlak, “Auto/Pathographies: Re-Constructing Identity Through Representations of Illness,” No More Potlucks (wound no. 7) (2010)
Tina Takemoto, “Specular Correspondence,” Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts 9.1 (2004), 46-56
Tina Takemoto, “Open Wounds,” Thinking Through the Skin, ed. Jackie Stacey and Sara Ahmed (Routledge 2001), 104-123
Tina Takemoto, “Arm’s Length,” Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts 5.3 (2001), 82-85;
Tina Takemoto, “Her/She Senses,” Point of Departure, ed. Darby English, Alex Miokovic, and Kirsi Peltomäki (Rochester: Hartnett Gallery and University of Rochester 1998)
Tina Takemoto, “Performativity and Difference: The Politics of Illness and Collaboration,” The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 27.1 (Spring 1997), 7-22
“Imag(in)ed Malady,” Confronting Cancer Through Art, ed. Kathryn Hillegass, exhibition catalog (Arthur Ross Gallery and University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center 1996),17