The Báthory-dress is woven of medical tubes. Using compressed air, it gradually fills with red liquid.

Alluding to the character of the female vampire, the dress picks out the coining of certain ideas about a ‘monstrous feminine’ as its central theme. Referencing in particular the character of Elisabeth Báthory, the dress points at historic origins as well as the literary exploitation that have coined the imagery surrounding the myth.
 

The opposites of the cruel and the beautiful, the interplay of pathology and aesthetics, the apparent contradiction between femininity and violence flow into the performance, the staging and the object of the dress. 
The process of metamorphosis, in which the colorless dress is filled with red, refers as a transformation to the inner shift from a neutral to an aggressive moment.

2008 | Sammlung Esterházy
PVC tubes, pressure pump, red liquid