Rocio Boliver on pain and performance

Why pain in my performances?

Physical pain might be easy to understand, but psychological pain on the other hand remains a mystery to both medical and spiritual minds. I’ve gone through several depressions in my life, and almost no one has understood why I’ve been suffering from infinite sadness and excruciating emotional pain, because apparently I don’t have any “disease”. From age 12 to 15, I had a kidney disease that obliged me to be in bed most of the time. My life was closely associated with hospitals, painful tests, injections, blood, urine, excrement/ feces, chemical tests, etc…

The pain was profound, but strangely enough I began to experience my sensuality in the tenderness of the doctors and male nurses thus leading me to reach a sexual awakening. The medical crew gave me affection and physical stimulation while examining me, carrying me to bed, drawing blood from me, etc. I felt as if they where my protectors.

In my art work, PAIN is primarily associated with loss of consciousness and a thirst or need to be cared for and cured, associated with male approach.
In each piece I demonstrate my psychological pain, pain of the soul.
In short, most of my performances speak of emotional loss. It’s through them I can show and relief this pain, this unstoppable grief, make it my own so I can mourn and digest it.

It is my belief that society doesn’t understand the magnitude of emotional pain. Madness is taboo, so it is better or more acceptable to be sick with something tangible.

As a child I couldn’t explain my sadness and got mad when nobody seemed to understand me. My parents and doctors were always worried about my bodily disease but never considered my pain to be beyond physical explanations, which lead me to show it in the physical form, because emotional pain is ultimately more disturbing for its imminence.

At the end of my performances, I am usually plagued by a throbbing episode of uncontrollable crying. It is a catharsis. Feeling physical pain and sublimate it into a performance is my way of healing my emotional wounds.

Rocio Boliver aka La Congelada de Uva.