Into Pieces is an installation and live performance by Brazilian artist Roberta Lima which engages themes of the body and femininity, spatiality, and audience interaction and response, interests which have been displayed in previous performances such as 6teen Stitches and Lights Out!

Into Pieces moves beyond deconstructive approaches that have been prevalent in past work in order to consider the potentialities of performance space, the body and cultural memory. Mnemotechnics are explored in displays of wall-mounted fragments and are expressed in the enactment of engendered movements connected to the space of the woman’s lap, a site of the body found to be significant for Roberta by way of its history as a place of women’s needlecrafts such as knitting, sewing, and embroidering.

A manipulation of presence and absence is achieved by use of video relay and loops alongside the live performance, a technique which invokes a sense of voyeuristic intrusion of the public into a private space. The surveillance cameras installed in the space redouble this sense of a panoptic gaze and suggest the construction of the subject as an effect of performativity and disciplinary watchfulness.