“Art is the hole which the needle of life threads itself through every time”
A physicist told me that. A man who helped develop the laser, who could not have been further from the art world if he had tried. Someone constitutionally allergic to anything he considered “frivolous.” And yet this line — his line — has stayed with me for years.
How could someone so uninterested in art be so certain that art is, in fact, essential? Paramount. Necessary to humanity.
So if art really is the hole the world threads itself through to be understood, maybe we ought to look at mental health through that same aperture. And honestly, I’m backed by a physicist, so read on good skeptic.
The Body as Medium (And How Uncomfortable Are You Already?)
Let’s start with artists who use their own bodies as their material. Yes — that corner of art. The one that already makes people squirm.
This isn’t new. There has always been a line of performative acts where the body is the message. Joan of Arc. Women’s liberation activists stepping in front of galloping horses. Even Marie Antoinette’s alleged “let them eat cake” — a line so simple it becomes a trapdoor into poverty, hunger, inequality.
The body as symbol, as a battleground, as public text.
And Then There’s the Play in New York
Right now at BAM in New York, a performance by Carlina Bianchi pushes the conversation further — straight into the territory of trauma and the female body.
In her piece, “The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella,” Bianchi drugs herself onstage. This is not a metaphor. She drinks a sedative-spiked concoction in front of the audience to explore violence against women — specifically, the drugging and erasure of memory that so many victims experience.
She tells the audience exactly what will happen: first confusion, then the overwhelming urge to sleep. And once she does, collaborators will step in and continue the performance without her.
Her memory of what follows will be erased. Just as it was the night she was drugged and raped.
She acknowledges, almost tenderly, that the audience might feel embarrassed or awkward watching her slip away. Then she delivers a lecture — part monologue, part plea — about women artists who have pushed their bodies to extremes to expose truths.
She speaks of murders and the stories behind them - the thousands of women abused, erased, and her words begin to slur. Her posture collapses. Desperation enters her voice. She implores us to stay with her, to follow the thread of these stories even as sleep overtakes her.
Watching a woman choose to surrender control with the very substance historically used to steal it — watching her recreate the slow descent so many women have unknowingly lived — is devastating.
There is no violence onstage. And yet, as she says:
“The violence of the show is not what’s happening on stage — it is in what is not happening.”
Can Art Carry This Much Weight?
In a world where trauma is a daily, global weather system — steady, relentless, everywhere — who is responsible for jolting the rest of us awake? Who must carry the weight of truth-telling?
If the answer is art, can art actually bear it? And can it bear it well?
I think the best art refuses to tidy things up. It stays open-ended, petaled, leaning toward questions rather than solutions. It unsettles. It lingers. It makes your walk home feel slightly off-kilter. It leaves a small stone of discomfort in your pocket.
