Rubbing One Out is a performance of laborious processes and object making. The inside of a bronze casting of the artist’s head will be hand polished to a mirror finish. The laborious process is a negotiation of narcissism and spirituality; a meditative but compulsive sublimation to rub the material until it is able to reflect back a clear image of its maker.
Joshua Vettivelu is a queer, South Asian artist working within sculpture, installation and performance, their work seeks to explore how larger frameworks of power impact and manifest within intimate and personal relationships by utilizing the interiority of the body as an unknowable and imagined space. They have exhibited across Canada and internationally. Exhibitions of note include the British Film Institute’s LGBT Film Festival, Performatorium in Regina, SK, MIX NYC 2013, 011+91 | 011+92 at the Art Gallery of Mississauga, SUPERNOVA Performance Festival in Washington DC, Dreamworlds in St. John’s, NL and a performance/ installation for ART TORONTO 2012 presented by the South Asian Visual Arts Center (SAVAC).
