Kate Gilmore, High-Heeled Warrior

Kate Gilmore, High-Heeled Warrior

November 24, 2008  5:16 pm

Fall 2008 had its ups and downs in every sphere of life. The runway was no exception, as heel heights spiked and a few vertiginously imperiled models subsequently tumbled. Tough times, indeed. Just don’t ask performance artist Kate Gilmore to don flats in similarly dangerous circumstances. “I play with the idea of a woman ‘trapped’ or in a difficult situation,” Gilmore explains of her one-woman videos, now on view at Lower East Side gallery Smith-Stewart. Filmed privately or in site-specific locales, the three featured works, including Between a Hard Place and Higher Horse, find a be-heeled Gilmore respectively punching and kicking through layers of drywall, and perched atop a pile of plaster blocks while two men go at the foundation with sledgehammers. Though her protagonists (typically aided/hobbled by a few inches of added stature) aren’t always successful in their endeavors, they nevertheless manage to “break out,” as Gilmore puts it. “The core of the work is about obsessively and determinedly trying to achieve something,” she explains. A little balance, perhaps? No easy, ahem, “feat,” considering Gilmore’s choice of footwear, which, she concedes, while critical to her work, can also be both uncomfortable and restricting. But heels do have their advantages. Says the artist: “Shoes can be used as tools to escape, to break things, even as a weapon. I’m attracted to the idea of something looking fabulous but having this other very dark life.”