Alexandra Bischoff
  • ALEXANDRA BISCHOFF
    • Statement & CV
  • Selected Projects
    • Attempts at Preservation
    • beholden
    • crick
    • give my regrets
    • Here you go, Bernard
    • homesick
    • house poor
    • Notes on Madonna
    • The Readers
    • Rereading Room: the Vancouver Women's Bookstore (1973-1996)
    • secretory
    • shelving
  • Partial Archive
    • au clair de la lune
    • a muse me
    • cherry shrimp and golden Laure
    • Dear Large Bachelor
    • eggshells, eggshells
    • For the Good Times
    • Iron-Woman
    • I SEE THINGS IN YOU (36 Vancouver Galleries)
    • Peep Show Pop-Up
    • Skin on Skin
    • sleepy selfies
    • SOOT
    • Suds-Bucket
    • thrum
  • ALEXANDRA BISCHOFF
    • Statement & CV
  • Selected Projects
    • Attempts at Preservation
    • beholden
    • crick
    • give my regrets
    • Here you go, Bernard
    • homesick
    • house poor
    • Notes on Madonna
    • The Readers
    • Rereading Room: the Vancouver Women's Bookstore (1973-1996)
    • secretory
    • shelving
  • Partial Archive
    • au clair de la lune
    • a muse me
    • cherry shrimp and golden Laure
    • Dear Large Bachelor
    • eggshells, eggshells
    • For the Good Times
    • Iron-Woman
    • I SEE THINGS IN YOU (36 Vancouver Galleries)
    • Peep Show Pop-Up
    • Skin on Skin
    • sleepy selfies
    • SOOT
    • Suds-Bucket
    • thrum
Here you go, Bernard, 2019-2020
performance with modified blue velvet curtains, gold curtain rod and hardware, lights, wireless lav mic, wireless speakers, and the artist’s breast 
duration: variable
This title is in reference to the Nursing Madonna’s alternate genre, “The Lactation of Saint Bernard”. In depictions of this religious fable, “[u]sually, Saint Bernard requests from the Virgin Mary to ‘monstra te esse matrem’ (‘show yourself to be a mother’), upon which she replies ‘ecce Bernarde’ (‘here you go, Bernard’)” and then she squirts her breast milk into his eye or mouth (Sperling 902-903).

A perfectly circular hole is cut in a 10' blue velvet curtain, out of which my left breast eerily emerges. Through this segmentation of my body I mirror the Nursing Madonna’s floating mammary. Behind the curtain, I exercise agency in an uncanny manner. Using a wireless lav microphone, and a wireless speaker placed elsewhere in the gallery, I converse with my visitors and occasionally sing “Blue Velvet” (1950).

Sperling, Jutta. “Squeezing, Squirting, Spilling Milk: The Lactation of Saint Bernard and the Flemish Madonna Lactans (ca. 1430-1530).” RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY, vol. 71, no. 3, pp. 868–918.

​
Performed on February 5, 2020 during Open Studios, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (Banff, AB) with Notes on Madonna and secretory. 
  • ALEXANDRA BISCHOFF
    • Statement & CV
  • Selected Projects
    • Attempts at Preservation
    • beholden
    • crick
    • give my regrets
    • Here you go, Bernard
    • homesick
    • house poor
    • Notes on Madonna
    • The Readers
    • Rereading Room: the Vancouver Women's Bookstore (1973-1996)
    • secretory
    • shelving
  • Partial Archive
    • au clair de la lune
    • a muse me
    • cherry shrimp and golden Laure
    • Dear Large Bachelor
    • eggshells, eggshells
    • For the Good Times
    • Iron-Woman
    • I SEE THINGS IN YOU (36 Vancouver Galleries)
    • Peep Show Pop-Up
    • Skin on Skin
    • sleepy selfies
    • SOOT
    • Suds-Bucket
    • thrum