Hysteria Project/beautiful women eating cake

created by Dara Malina

chashama 266
266 E 37th Street (between 7th and 8th Ave)

February 13-19, 2012
February 13, 14, 15, 17 @ 6pm & 7pm
February 18, 19 @ 4pm, 5pm & 7pm

Featuring: Jeanne Lauren Smith, Melanie Siegel, Stephanie Patent

Female Hysteria, it has been said, was discovered by the Doctor Charcot at the Salpêtrière hospital in late nineteenth-century Paris. Voyeurism at its finest, Charcot displayed his patients performing stages of hysterical attack before a live audience. In Hysteria Project/beautiful women eating cake we recreate the act of “performing hysteria” based on diagrams and accounts from the Salpêtrière. Meanwhile, we present a contemporary comparison – female hysteria as examined through emotional eating.