Your gaze. My body. unfolded as a live intervention that activated Mother Tongue at its core, shifting the exhibition from a space of observation into one of embodied encounter. Moving amongst the audience, their presence dissolved the boundary between viewer and work, placing the body unmistakably at centre stage. Through a minimal, improvised score of walking, looking, and gradual undressing, the performance exposed the quiet yet pervasive power of the gaze, how it inscribes meaning onto the female body before any words are spoken.

Within the context of Mother Tongue, the piece operated as a living language: one composed not of text or speech, but of gesture, duration, and proximity. The performers’ actions made visible the unspoken codes that shape how women inhabit their bodies—oscillating between vulnerability, resistance, and control. As the audience became implicated in the act of looking, the work transformed passive viewing into active participation, asking each viewer to confront their own position within these dynamics.

In this moment, language was stripped back to its most immediate form—the body itself. Dowling and Fernandez created a shared, temporal “mother tongue,” one that emerged collectively in the space between performer and audience. Through this, the performance not only reflected the exhibition’s themes but intensified them, reclaiming the body as both site and speaker, and asserting its power to challenge, disrupt, and redefine the structures that seek to contain it.

My Body, Your Gaze Performance, 2023