What is the meaning of touch? Politics of emotions in a performance by Ariela Naftal at the Larreta Museum

"When I think of affectivity, I think of the skin as a border that feels."

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Sara Ahmed

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"Our skin makes up sixteen percent of our body weight and covers about two square meters. No other part of the body is as exposed to the outside world, or so vulnerable, as the skin."

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Diane Ackerman

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[...] Ariela Naftal's latest performance in an untouchable room at the Larreta Museum seems to speak to this as well—how vital physical contact is. How, by touching and allowing ourselves to be touched, we create unexpected relationships not only with our environment but, most importantly, with ourselves: we (re)discover ourselves in that encounter. Ultimately, this is the ethical program that performative practices offer: the staging and experimentation of a more diverse, more kind, more comprehensive politics of emotions.

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Lic. Mariana Rodríguez Iglesias