As I descended the basement steps of the tiny one room Y gallery on Thursday night I had few expectations.  I was there to see “Golden Cage” a seven day performance by New York artist Hector Canonge, which opened on Wednesday. The project is inspired by the 18^th century poet Sayat Nova’s descriptions of growing up as an immigrant in the USA. Canonge describes the project as a reflection on the lives and experiences of illegal immigrants, who often forsake human rights and basic freedoms for the materials gains offered in the west.

Each day the performance stretches from 5PM to 8PM, so as I walked into the completely black gallery at roughly 7PM, I was surprised to find the pitch black space, mid-performance, devoid of spectators. The void-like space was occupied by a singular ring in the middle of the room, defined by a series of neon green fluorescent wires, spilling eerie green light across the floor.  The artist, crouched naked inside the glowing space, was surrounded by an immense unwound scroll of tissue, densely filled with words. As the artist began to re-wind the scroll, I was struck by the semi religious feeling of ritual. Having wound his text, the artist produced a second scroll, and without pause began to write. Great flowing letters, the words full of metaphor, which are not singular thoughts or phrases but pieces of a larger whole, one iteration of the immigrant story.

What was particularly interesting to me was the duality of meaning (which would at face value seem to be contradictory) present in both action and space. Walking counter clockwise around his “golden cage”, Canonge met and held my gaze with startling ferocity, everything about this moment was confrontational, stark and disarming, a performative metaphor for the state of the illegal immigrant, both vulnerable and restricted. I, the viewer could not help but share this feeling of isolation.  However, the longer I stayed with the glowing green, the more I felt its light reverberate around me; the performer at times seemed not a prisoner, but creator, safe and meditative within his bright green mandala.

Throughout the space of the hour I spent at the Y gallery groups of visitors came and went, each time drastically affecting the atmosphere of the space. What speaks to the real strength of Canonage as a performer is how he carried on regardless of the audience (or lack thereof). The resulting reality depended not on a viewer, but seemed simply to hang there in the warm, black basement air.