99 Holds, Baseera Khan

A performance piece that uses a rock-climbing wall made from 99 resin casts of the artist's body. I saw it in a retrospective of Khan's work at the Brooklyn Museum years ago and still think about it. A commentary on gender, autonomy, colonialism — climbing over female forms, isolated and anonymous, to ascend wherever you're going. There's also Braidrage, the companion piece also in this photo — it's a massive climbing rope made of a single long braid, which nods to the artist's South Asian cult...