Bianca O'Brien/Dominik Lejman REENACTMENT

The ongoing cooperation between Dominik Lejman and performer Bianca O'Brien was initiated with works presented at Chiesa di San Servolo during the 59th Venice Biennale (Madnicity Pavilion). Based on the archives of the former psychiatric hospital on San Servolo island, it reflects on the idea of madness as the universal key figure in understanding the contemporary society. Following exhibitions: 'Reenactment' Ostrów Tumski, Poznań, Poland 2023 'Lunatycy/Lunatyczki' PGS Sopot, Poland 2025 A work first installed in the chapel on the island of San Servolo in the Venice lagoon. That Venetian island was a place of madness, an asylum where hands, visible and invisible, restrained bodies and heads, held them in place for the cold eye of the camera; for modern medical science. As it was then. Cameras were slower; movement compromised the image. There was a garden on that island, and in that garden the mad would stand. Or perhaps they would lie. Boats would visit, and from those boats the sane would stare at the mad, who were held in place by the walls and the bars and the water that bounded their garden. So a piece about restraint, then? About bodies and minds locked into place? About hands, seen and unseen? Because what is this work? A woman, presented to our gaze? A madwoman, as we would once have called her? Is this madness, restrained? Well, perhaps. Lejman has described Reenactment as an anagram in video form — the footage runs backward, then forward, but appears to form a seamless loop. O’Brien, his collaborator, is perfectly still before the camera until — briefly — she isn’t. Feel her gaze. Feel it lock on to yours. This work was born in winter, in the chapel beside the dissection room, on the island of the mad. The force of the gaze, of the draped body, and of the stillness — they remain in the work. A body still trapped in place; a mind still straining to escape. And always… Always the hands, guiding everything back into place. Ben McPherson