What would you like to discuss with the doctor today? What do you desire? These irresistible, almost indecent questions propelled a sensory, attentive performance by New York artist Emma Sulkowicz. Over the course of a month Sulkowicz installed a parafictional medical clinic in Philadelphia, where they offered a revolutionary cure for human desire. In 30-minute, one-on-one sessions, Sulkowicz (in the role as practitioner “Dr.” Emma Sulkowicz MD, creator and leading expert of the patented Healing Method™) empowered the "clients"—participants put in the place of patients—to satiate their desire through personalized treatments.
In their previous, nationally-recognized performances Carry That Weight (2015) and Self-Portrait (Performance With Object) (2016), Emma Sulkowicz has repeatedly experienced the insatiable desire of audiences to touch their body. Rejecting and inverting this intimate wish in a public performance, Sulkowicz's wellness center provided customized treatments to redirect and cure the participants’ feral desires. In a broader sense, the fulcrum of this work was the artist’s questioning of theoretical concepts of touch, superstitions about healing, and the valuation of women in society. In the role as a curative servant Sulkowicz particularly challenges the insufficient appreciation of Asian American women in the service sector in the United States, who are both a growing population and an important class of workers in education, the social and cultural sectors, and entertainment. The artist intertwines concerns about the objectification of the female and female-presenting body with broader issues relating to individual freedom, self-determination, morality, desire, and the boundaries between art and life.
