Paul Donald
Orpheus the lyre
Paul Donald
A large wooden head, visually somewhere between a shed, a ship, and skull, made from cedar planks, is bound with rope, its mouth is open. A figure, the sole performer, up upon the head, stands on it, hangs from it, lays on it, and twisting the ropes that bind it, knocking against and rubbing the wood, “plays” the head as if it were some kind of monstrous instrument or vessel, forces the head to “sing” from its open mouth.
Los Angeles-based artist Paul Donald performs works that enact a self-demolition by way of construction—construction performances/performances with construction. Materiality and embodiment, smell and sound, metaphor and simile, all entangled, he makes to break—chipping away at structures of whiteness, masculinity, and colonial subjectivity, one wooden object at a time.