Shame
2023
[Location] London, UK
[Medium] Live Performance / Movement
[Role] Performer
[Lead Artist] Cornelis Joubert
[Link] UAL Showcase
[About]
Shame is not an idea you can hold at arm's length. It lives in the body — in the shoulders that round inward, in the gaze that drops, in the breath you don't fully take. This piece starts there. Created by Cornelis Joubert and presented at the UAL Showcase, Shame is a multidisciplinary performance that investigates the lived experience of shame within the LGBTQ+ community, fusing fashion design with live movement. As lead performer, I used my body as the primary medium — not to represent shame, but to move through it in real time in front of an audience. The choreography was devised to make the invisible visible: the internal conflict of wanting to be seen and wanting to disappear, happening simultaneously.
There's a moment in the piece where restriction and release happen in the same gesture. That tension — between the social armour we wear and the vulnerability beneath — is what the work holds open.
Shame was nominated for the MullenLowe NOVA Award (UAL × MullenLowe Global), recognising innovation, creative excellence, and critical relevance. For me, the nomination affirmed something important: that using the body to critique social norms — gently, physically, without polemic — is a form of work that matters in the contemporary art landscape.