Lipstick Liberation : A feminist performance mapping the femicides in the public performing space

Abstract

This paper explores the role of the performer's body as a critical and expressive tool in contemporary performance art, focusing on site-specific interventions in public space. It examines Lipstick Liberation, a performance executed by the authors of the paper, which addresses gender-based violence and the rise of femicides during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this work, the two performers walk through various Athenian neighbourhoods, using personal red lipsticks to trace their paths and denounce both violence against femininities and women and institutional indifference. The lipstick, reappropriated as a political device, functions as a medium of resistance and embodied expression. The analysis emphasises the performance' s mobility and adaptability (encouraging everybody to partake), which expose the failures of public structures to protect feminised identities. A site-specific iteration in Glyka Nera brings into focus the spatial politics of gender and memory, contrasting the urban density of Exarchia with the suburban emptiness of Glyka Nera. Through ephemeral, immaterial mapping and symbolic action at the intersection of public private spheres, Lipstick Liberation challenges spatial and social inequalities. The paper argues that such performances activate urban space as a site of resistance and remembrance, highlighting the transformative potential of art to provoke awareness and foster coexistence.