Reviewed by Sam Trubridge, artistic director of the performance arcade:
“Three figures await us in the cavernous space of Te Whaea’s Basement Theatre. Three women on a clean white circle of tarpaulin for Ella Lincoln’s performance art triptych Pupa. Each has a white wig and wears white. One is in a white dress surrounded by bottles of water, one is hidden inside a long plastic tube of white tarpaulin, and another holds a melon in front of her. From her head, parting the white hair, is the blade of a long kitchen knife. Lincoln starts with stillness, holding this stark bright tableau in front of us with confidence in the power of its image and its meanings. Then it starts to move slightly – we notice the woman with the melon is slowly tensing her muscles, gradually shortening her stature as she moves towards a squat. It will be a while before she gets there. As time passes the white plastic tube animates: the narrower end beginning to articulate like the head of a grub or worm looking for the light. The third figure stoops to pick up a bottle. She places it to her lips, then decides against it, and replaces the bottle. In these slow drawn-out moments a visceral feminine language begins to take form – of the fruit/womb/fetus, of possible beginnings and endings, of bodies encased and carried in other bodies, and of the liquids that our bodies contain for a while. The figure in the dress begins to imbibe water from the bottles. Most of it runs over her chin, neck, chest, and dress. A stain grows in the dress – brown and yellow that runs to the floor. The figure breaks from her cocoon of white plastic, and the knife slashes into the melon. Each figure posssesses a mythical or primeval stature. The crouching, pecking melon-eater looks like a character from a Bosch painting, with her knife headpiece that makes both gentle incisions and violent thrusts with this weird prosthetic blade. The figure in the cocoon writhes and twists inside her tube of tarpaulin, extruding it from her body like a giant mouthpiece from which she lets out a long ghastly scream. Through all of this the upright, statuesque figure of the drinker – slowly staining her dress more brown, drenching her garments until the colour reaches out across the floor. Eventually these three figures meet, putting aside their items – united in movement”
