What Shapes You?, Art Performance by Michelle Baharier at MIMA, Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art, February 2025

My art performance piece ‘What shapes you?’ is part of Rising in Our Power takeover at MIMA Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, by the ‘In/Visible National Disable Women's Art Collective. 

Funded by Arts Council England.

The In/Visible women have been working together since the pandemic in 2020. This is our second Arts Council Funded Project, which took over a year produce.

This artwork was commissioned and made specifically for MIMA using Middlesbrough history and incorporating people such as Naomi Jacobs a Jewish Writer who was banned from teaching for life because she wore trousers and lived openly as a lesbian. Please watch the video of the performance to see how she's integrated into the artwork.

The performance began with my school report from 1972 before I was diagnosed with dyslexia. Since then, the world has changed and I explored this with spoken word and the use of body and a costume of a customised strong dress that transforms into a bridge.

I created an intervention for the audience combining the life of a dyslexic, an outsider who shares the hidden women of Middlesbrough’s fight as suffragettes and wearers of trousers.

I also brought to life my Transformation Bridge with the reality of the Transporter Bridge that is locally known as the Dragonfly Bridge.

During the In/Visible Women MIMA Takeover there were performances, interventions, zine and placard making, a procession, and a beautiful publication we created for people to take away.