Tucked into 107 Redfern Street is Shopfront Arts’ heartfelt, intimate ArtsLab: Collide!, a festival celebrating young emerging Sydney artists. Nestled around cosy couches and beanbags, works of various mediums (video, puppetry, dance, theatre and visual arts) come together stunningly well for a small space. Each young artist works with a mentor to bring their final product to the gallery; the atmosphere is one of support, collaboration, and interrelatedness.
Perhaps the best embodiment of the festival’s spirit is Mym Kwa’s The Girl is/a Glitch. Kwa’s performance artwork, supported by mentor Marnie Palomares, takes her audience throughout the gallery, from the street outside to the stairwell. Using a series of mirrors, from full-length bedroom mirrors to desk vanity mirrors to tiny makeup compacts, Kwa moves through space and catches the eyes of her audience’s reflections, both provoking and reacting to her audience with her expressions.
The prolonged one-on-one eye contact emphasises artist-audience connection to the extreme, which you might think could get overly intense, even confrontational, but Kwa is deliberately playful and keeps the stakes low. Her relaxed, friendly smile and whimsical experimentation with lighting, refraction, and funhouse mirror proportions take the pressure off. Crucially, the interaction takes place in a safe, separate space inside the mirror, reserved for one purpose only, allowing the audience to forget material burdens. Thus, the audience is invited not to be observed or judged, but to take an active role in a conversation and collaboration with the artist. People say the Mona Lisa’s most memorable feature is her eyes that follow you around the room; that purposeful connection like the kind Kwa forms with her audience makes the difference between consuming and experiencing.
The performance is not just Kwa and the mirror. Kwa works with and augments the space, calling attention to the details and quirks of 107 Redfern, playing with indoor and outdoor space, windows and framing, and endless ways to pose around and interact with furniture. Kwa’s background in theatre and dance shines through; her movement is intentional, and the choices she makes with it—relaxed, tense, fluid, robotic—are just as captivating as the mirror itself. Part dance, part celebration of movements found in everyday life, Kwa’s physicality is a treat to watch. To keep a three-and-a-half hour show refreshing and interesting throughout is not easy, and Kwa’s interaction with the gallery in new and different ways throughout accomplishes that wonderfully.
Accompanying music by Daniel Bailen is the cherry on top. Bailen’s dreamy, mesmerising sound—recorded live in the gallery on guitar, drum pad, and a dizzying array of loop and reverb pedals—fills the space with a hazy, tranquil energy that primes the audience for Kwa’s mirror dimension of human connection.
If you’re not a fan of prolonged eye contact, The Girl is/a Glitch might not be for you—although Kwa’s movement in and interactions with the space outside the mirror are a performance in their own right. Other than that, Kwa’s work is a must-see of the festival, and is bound to leave you reflecting on the intentional connections you make in your everyday life.
Kwa is performing The Girl is/a Glitch at 107 Redfern Street’s downstairs theatre on weekdays (5-8:30 pm) and weekends (1-4:30 pm) until 24 March.
