Alone on stage, Phia Ménard arms her­self with cour­age, determ­in­a­tion and tape to build a house out of card­board. Her per­form­ance is marked by an impress­ive ten­sion between the body and the ele­ments, cast­ing her as a mod­ern Athena.

For the past 25 years, Phia Ménard and her com­pany Non Nova have been work­ing around the notions of trans­form­a­tion, erosion or sub­lim­a­tion of nat­ur­al mater­i­als (such as ice, water, steam, wind) and their implic­a­tions for human beha­vi­or. Mais­on Mère is the first part of La Tri­lo­gie des Contes Immor­aux (for Europe), com­mis­sioned by doc­u­menta 14, Kas­sel’s five-year con­tem­por­ary art fest­iv­al, around the theme of “Learn­ing from Athens, for a Par­lia­ment of Bod­ies”. Cir­cus artist and visu­al artist Phia Ménard grapples with a giant sheet of card­board, a few yards of tape and some spikes. With a sure hand, she spreads out, traces, cuts, assembles, lays down, then repeats the pro­cess until the equa­tion is per­fect. But who is she? A mor­tal or a myth? Built with her bare hands, her card­board house resembles a make­shift Parthen­on, a pre­cari­ous shel­ter for the most fra­gile, those whom Europe leaves on its mar­gins (the Greek, drown­ing in debt and under European tutel­age) or those it refuses to wel­come with dig­nity (migrants). Halfway between the fig­ure of Athena, pro­tect­or of the city, and that of Sis­yphus, con­demned to keep on work­ing, Phia Ménard deliv­ers a strik­ing performance.