La Rupture du désir
When we strip pleasure of love, what remains of the self we once knew?
Fina Ferrara's La Rupture du Désir, is more than a performance. It's a disturbing tale about a licentious libertine’s tumultuous, self destructive pursuit of desire and self gratification. Ferrara wields wine glasses and red wine not as props, but as instruments in a ritualistic deconstruction of what happens when we unwittingly enslave ourselves to the desire of pleasure, leaving us to question what remains of the soul when lustful passion is stripped bare of emotion, of love.
From the very start, the discordant sound of shattering glass accosts the audience, creating a tension tension in the air synonymous with "unresolved trauma", setting the stage for Ferrara's hedonistic plunge into desire's destructive potential. She appears, draped in red, hair disheveled, a figurative narrative in flight, raw and vacillating.
The central motif of the performance is simple yet devastatingly effective. Ferrara pours a glass of red wine and sips, smugly tasting a new conquest, then apathetically allowing the glass slip from her hand, and shatters. Unabashed, she reapplies her lipstick before pouring the next glass of wine; the next ‘mark’, the next conquest. The ritual is fervently repeated with growing abandon. With each cycle, the lipstick is applied with growing masochistic fervor, exaggerating the lines of application, smearing ever more chaotically and grotesquely beyond the lips, becoming a powerful visual metaphor. Each discarded glass represents a transient encounter, the shattering glass a symbol of discarded, betrayed lovers, the spilled wine of meaningful love, bespoiled. The red wine also speaks of passion, but when passions are thus abused, though gratifying the Id, the soul is stained, the Ego humiliated and SuperEgo withered.
The moment of reckoning arrives when Ferrara finally confronts her reflection. The monstrous reflection forces a confrontation with the consequences of unchecked desire. Her attempts to wipe away the excess only exacerbate the effect; staining her skin, her hands, her body. A visceral representation of desperation's indelible mark. This scene is a highlight, a brutal and honest portrayal of the self-destructive, reductive nature of heedlessly pursuing self gratification at the expense of others.
The final act in the performance marks a turning point, where Ferrara, reacting to her monstrous reflection, strips away her dress in self-disgust, exposing a rawer, more exposed, vulnerable self. A glass of wine, now reverently held, no longer offering the taste on another conquest, but now represents a desperate need to taste something that lasts beyond impulse, beyond excess, beyond destruction.
"La Rupture du Désir" is not a comfortable performance. Ferrara's non-verbal storytelling performance is a deeply moving challenge to the audience to confront their own relationship with desire, pleasure, and intimacy. FIt is a powerful critique of a culture that often prioritizes the ephemeral over the eternal, the transactional over the transformative. It is a reminder that true connection lies not in the fleeting high of instant gratification, but in the deeper, more enduring realms of vulnerability and genuine connection.
La Rupture du désir
Opening event – 6 – 8 PM, 5th June 2025
Artists exhibited – Dorron Britz (UK), Susan Fraser-Hughes (Canada), Barbara Rachko (USA), Rajul Shah (USA – Singapore), Colette Leinman (French-Israeli)
Location – Vedica Art Studios and Gallery, Paris, India
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website: https://www.vedicaartgallery.com