Virginity Certificate considers virginity as a mutable threshold between the intimate and the collective, where the body becomes a site for the inscription of inherited values, moral codes, and social expectations. The work examines how an intangible condition can acquire material, symbolic, and social authority, transforming the private into something subject to interpretation, judgement, and verification.
The performance attends to the systems of meaning that produce and sustain it, questioning how ideas of purity, virtue, and transgression become attached to women’s bodies. In this space between selfhood and prescription, the work considers the negotiation of identity and bodily autonomy within structures that precede the individual.
Virginity Certificate | Performance | 9 min 20 sec | 2010 (Images courtesy of Kam Wan)
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