Born in Liège in 1987, Eva Mancuso’s work is oriented towards critical feminism. Through her practice at the crossroads of poetry, performance, self-fiction and the visual arts, she tackles political issues through the intimate, the everyday, what is considered to be household, trivial and anodyne. With simple words and plenty of pop-culture references, she tells of the glasses that pile up in the sink, the TV series we no longer enjoy watching, the bread we burn but eat anyway, to talk about what is inscribed in us in spite of ourselves, and the ruptures we experience with others and with ourselves to free ourselves from it.
With “Enclosure”, a performance conceived in collaboration with Anna Mancuso and presented at Maison Poème, Brussels, she questioned family and transmission from an anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal perspective. In the group show Down by the sea Engines, at Îles Mardi, Brussels, she presented “L’intériorité ça n’existe pas”, created with Eva L’Hoest, in which, based on her interaction with the video installation and the public, she questioned what it was to exist in the eyes of others. With “Mon corps n’est même pas une maison” (My body isn’t even a house), produced in collaboration with Anna Mancuso, she took as her starting point the story of a girl discovering sexuality through the “first time” films of the 2000s, to talk about normativity and consent. With “D’un coup il y a des phrases qui sortent de ma bouche”, created in collaboration with Sébastien Plevoets at the Mommen workshops, she took the confessions of reality TV contestants about their sexuality as a starting point for wondering how to perform without being performative. With “Vapeurs”, an installation produced for and by performance, presented at Art au center #14, Liège, she sought to blur the boundaries between different types of discourse (advertising, horoscopes, prophecies, diaries, litanies, etc.), presenting the same text in different ways and playing with the reading, writing, erasing, whispering, veiling and unveiling of supports.
After publishing in magazines (Sabir, Possession Immédiate, L’Écharde,…) and online (Remue.net, Lundi.am,…), her first book, Je n’arrive pas à parler et à dire des choses en même temps, will be released in April 2024 by Arbre de Diane.
©Portrait : Florine Fontaine
