I have always been drawn to the magic of storytelling. Like most of us the creation of adventures was a big part of my childhood. I was able to see something magical in the smallest and most mundane of things.
There was always an adventure waiting to happen, threads weaved together only waiting to be discovered, waiting to be unraveled by our own interpretations. So for a long time I lived in ideas, written words and moving pictures, letting my soul be touched by the creations of others. When the ideas became too plentiful, mine spilled onto paper, whenever I felt there where words that needed to be spoken. But as it is with everything in life, there exist limits to everything, and my expression found its limits with those things that I could not use words to aptly describe. Other forms of art fascinated me, the ways melodies and its accompanying dance, or a photograph can touch ones soul. Art has the ability to break open the seal of emotions that may have been buried. I became fascinated with everything seemingly abstract, with its deeper meaning hidden and only visible to those who strife to see.
Many years later, after becoming a body piercer and long gone through the process of growing up and then subsequently mended myself did I realize the effect of society’s expectations, limits, taboos and having those things ingrained in me. Although I was always questioning, fighting and in turn chose my profession because of this struggle for empowerment, drawn towards making my body my own and choosing my own outer shape. This is how I became fascinated by another form of art: Body Performances, using pain, blood and the strong energy that comes with it to make a point. I had so many stories to tell in this way but I was silent for a long time because the invisible scars of trying to conform were too deep. Until one day, when the time was right, I asked somebody I trusted to help me pour my anger, feelings, the criticisms of society’s standards and the damage they did onto the stage.
And here the adventure started, here catharsis happened, over and over again. And with time I understood how performing on stage although scary, was also exciting, beautiful, and god-damn badass to look at , but it gives you something back, something bigger than all the rest of it. It heals the wounds you have no word for. It gives you another way to feel your body. It lets you physically release the things that keep your anger burning and leaves you in tears, it allows you to let them out. But more important than anything; it allows you to connect, you can touch the soul of others.
Understanding this meant understanding that my profession as a body piercer is not so different to my cherished performance work. Because both circle around empowerment, reclaiming your body and healing the unspoken-of, maybe deeply-buried wound festering inside.
Photo by Le Vinee
Hika’s Interview with Noema:
Because of the power that is held in performance art I knew had to write about it. Noema Pasquali is a body piercer, performance artist, healer and yoga-teacher from Italy currently living in Berlin. Her work encompasses many topics and styles, and she regularly performs and teaches at BmxNet Conference.
Hika: Hello Noema! First of all thank you for doing this interview with me. Maybe we can start with you introducing yourself?“
Noema: My name is Noema but as an artist I have choosen the stage name Tiger Orchid (based on two elements really close to me). The tiger is the most important symbolic animal to me, since it is the animal of Durga, one of the gods I worship. Secondly I chose the orchid because is a really interesting plant, as it is delicate and with this not really easy to grow and yet astoundingly resilient.
H: Can you tell us how you got into performance in the first place? Was there a certain initial point that you can think about?
N: I think there is not really a definitive point where I started with my performances. Since I was a child I showed an aptitude for every kind of art and it was very clear that I was in need of some communication and expression. So during my studies and while growing up I was very drawn to anthropology, literature, semiotics and visual sociology. Basically all things to do with the research of humans and their history. Obviously I was more into rites of passages. When I was around twenty—so twenty years ago—I started my career as a fakir and every kind of emotion and relation close to pain and close to devotion has been really interesting for me. So when I discovered suspension I wanted to try. To have that feeling of trance and that moment when you pass into another dimension, when you feel nothing. Although I would say you are close to the God that is inside of you. That was one of the most powerful moments of my life I totally felt the power of that kind of rite and I planned my career into two different kind of directions. One was very devotional and the other a crazy one, more in the direction of freakshows, sideshows…though we can’t really say there is a difference to me, since those sideshows also had my devotion. Performing in a freakshow is the same as bakhti in yoga to me. It’s another kind of devotion.
H: I would also like to know what is your motivation to do performances, to keep you performing longterm? What kind of performances are the most important to you?
N: Rituals have been really important for me in my career as a performer since I use them to talk about some influences which are really strong in contemporary society—I am talking about the struggle in situations around things like gender and other controversial social situations. One of the most important performances in which I use hooks is a hommage to my grandfather’s death. Since he committed suicide I decided to create this kind of performance as a reply to his death. This was an amazing performance for which I used a passage from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I used the part in which Ophelia’s body should be buried and two clowns are sitting there talking about death and the reason people are committing suicide, as well as how they cannot enter heaven if they are responsible for their own death. This performance is directed towards people’s judgements and the social stigma surrounding suicide. We can basically say that my work is based on elements that are important on my journey as a student, or as a fakir or as a yoga teacher.
H: Which also is another thing—you are spreading into a lot of directions profession wise. Does this sometimes feel contradictory?
N: I can’t really say that there is a separation in the things I do. All I’ve done has been leading me to be the kind of performer I am now. This has been just a natural process for me. I still have to say I want to do this because performing has become a way for me to communicate and is to me the most important medium to empathize with other humans to let them recognize the issues at hand and try to educate them. I consider art the most powerful and also the most peaceful weapon ever. My heart has been my way to contribute to society, and to also give something to my community. We are growing into a society that has no idea what community is. We don’t share our hopes and dreams. There are no real connections. But I see that in this kind of underground art, there is a little community of people that are trying to bring something special, a kind of new communication. It’s amazing to see how we want to be part of this society in the most active way.
H: There is something I want to get into. You say there is not really a difference in the things you do—but I noticed you do very different things, one can say a split in your types of performance art. Some is more theatre like, where even the sideshow tells a story. Yet some is more serious, and dark. Do you see a difference with how the audience reacts? Because everytime you tell a story you approach it differently. I would expect that the audience reacts differently to you suturing your genitals together than you eating glass and spitting fire.
N: It is true that you always have different audiences and this may affect what you are doing on the stage. I am booked because I use different stories, but I can tell you that it’s mostly your attitude that makes the difference. When you are really good in communicating what you are doing, even blood is not scary, and usually I use a lot of blood in my performances. I use a lot of things that could be seen as scary, for example stitching my genitals for my last art performance. Even though I use more hardcore elements in my sideshows, people are more scared of what I am doing with my art performances. But the point of why they are scared is that during those performances solely for art there is the absence of “entertainment”. During my performance art I tell other kinds of stories. They are based on empathy and maybe some socialities, they are more sensitive. They are more connected to soul things. It’s not about what I do, it’s about what people see. It’s more based on their own story and their interpretation of my art performance. I just work with the kinds of archetypes I learned about in my studies of anthropology (which is really easy for me since this was one of my favorite subjects as a student). So everything is really connected to things deep inside of us, we are linked more to a kind of tribe—a community—than to a society. This is where I base my work on and people get scared because I just bring them back to their own soul. Blood is the first element of life.
So they get scared—but again, it is not about me, it is about them. They recognize all those ideas and spirits.
H: I noticed from my own performances for example that some people take the story in a little bit better if they laugh before, if you offer them some fun. They open up to think and don’t get so scared. Do you ever think about making living solely, this means taking more bookings that would be for entertainment purposes rather than for art per se. For example when you work in fetish parties to spit fire there. Do you still tell those kind of stories or is it only entertainment? How do you feel about that, if there even is any difference?
N: For fetish parties I can say that it is not so far away from who I am. I am forty, don’t forget this (laughs). When I started all my performance art it was way easier to do it in the underground scene which BDSM was part of. Ritual—The Club in Rome, where I have been the main performer for at least six years, was also host to Ron Athey twice, and was one of the first to have fetish parties using performance art back in the 90s. Having a field to express yourself in underground parties was easier back then. In the past I was the kind of woman that one didn’t easily meet, I was somehow “the different one” so it was easier to go there to express myself, to dress as I liked, to feel free and to meet normal people also expressing their desires, their individuality . There was no judgement. Now I can say that it is true that as BDSM changed so did those parties. Now I like when I can interact with the people, I know what to do. Now at parties where I am entertaining (versus performing) I don’t work with needles on those people but I work with fire and let them try warm wax. There is a kind of communication based on the acknowledgement of another aspect of your body, another kind of feeling. How things work. I let them play, they trust me and they are always grateful because they discovered and tried something new.
H: Also you are working as a yoga-teacher and a healer. Do you want to tell us something about that aspect of your life?
N: This actually also started when I was really young. Most of the artists I know work as a healer—actually, trying to communicate and empathize is integral for being a healer. Being a healer is a nature, we can say. I always had that call from the universe, I always had that kind of gift and of course as all the people in the healing scene I was feeling always connected to all kind of energies. Working with them makes you also understand people’s problems and you realize you are not the only one living on this planet. Everybody is the same as you, maybe in a different body, but the problems are always the same. Always the same. So basically my career as a healer is one that is part of all of my other careers—as I told you in the start, everything is connected, I don’t see a difference in anything I do. It is all part of my big project in being an evolved woman.
H: Last but not least, do you see something in common with being a piercer and being a performer? Do you see a connection in performing and body piercing in itself, apart from you using needles on stage obviously.
N: My performance career started from being a body piercer. It actually started when I began piercing myself. This was my way of becoming closer to my own body, to the perception of it. I felt when the needles went through the skin as well as all its consequences. In my work, there is a big part that I really love to focus on is the expression of the body, the pain and the feelings which has been possible to me through piercing and being a piercer.
For me it is not only a strong connection but a natural evolution as a first step to enter into body art. We have an idea of what people are scared of and what the social implications of modifications due to societal pressures. The judgement that society has about the piercing world. As a piercer this is an interesting kind of approach. It is not only about the skin and the jewelry. It’s talking to people that are sometimes far from your way of life. They are a kind of audience for you as a piercer. It is like being on a stage, there is nothing different. You have to interact with people and to know people and take interest in what they say. So as you can see once again I can tell you that nothing of what I do is really divided. It is always in your approach, and my approach is always the same, the attitude is always the same. So I am just a good traveller—let’s say it that way. I am really interested in knowledge and research and discovery and of all things the most important thing now is to evolve, to be in contact with people around me.
H: Thank you so much Noema! This was really interesting and eye-opening!
N: Thanks for having the interview!
