Bodybox
I Float Like a Rock
Mahsa Salali
About the work
I Float Like a Rock is a long-durational performance that explores the politics of violence, complicity, and survival through the symbolic weight of stones. Drawing from histories of femicide, stoning, and systemic gender-based violence in Islamic cultures and beyond, the work reclaims the body as both archive and agent of resistance. Combining endurance, ritual, and sound, it constructs a space where vulnerability operates as a political strategy rather than a site of victimhood.
This gesture pays homage to Ana Mendieta’s earth-body works, particularly her performance in which she lay buried beneath rocks. In referencing Mendieta, I Float Like a Rock acknowledges a feminist lineage of using the body as medium and critique while re-situating the act within diasporic, queer, and Middle Eastern contexts. Where Mendieta’s work addressed exile, earth, and belonging, this piece extends those concerns toward the politics of femicide, queerness, and the shared complicity of audiences in re-enacting historical violence.
Above the performer, stones hang suspended by thin strings, floating in precarious balance. These elements destabilize the inevitability of gravity and create a visual paradox: rocks that should fall remain hovering, fragile yet defiant. The floating stones extend the conceptual framework of the title I Float Like a Rock, a phrase that symbolizes the experience of those who do not belong to fixed systems of nation, gender, or tradition, but who nonetheless continue to exist, heavy and luminous, against the logic of exclusion.
About the artist
Mahsa Salali
London, UK
Mahsa Salali is an Iranian multidisciplinary performance artist, contemporary pianist, activist, and curator. They are co-curator of MYTO, an ecosystem dedicated to interdisciplinary and politically charged art practices, bringing resilient, innovative, and provocative works to life.
In September 2023, Salali completed Cleaning the House Workshop, an intensive program by Marina Abramović focused on long-durational performance art. Subsequently, they participated in Abramović’s solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, performing selected works and collaborating closely with Abramović and her team.