For her performance "Une main qui en sert une autre" (One hand serving another), Jot Fau worked with the form and the idea of a life jacket, for what it says about the state of the world, and what it crystallises as a symbol. Creating a space to deal with concepts such as survival and urgency, Jot Fau has designed a survival garment and made it the main actor of her action.

 

In the first instance the viewer sees the artist completing a gauze object whose use remains enigmatic. Meanwhile a large pot of water is placed on a fire. When the artist seems to have finished the object, she puts her head through an opening and places the object on her shoulders like a garment.

 

She carries it to the pot, and slips it off as soon as the water boils. After cooking for about ten minutes, the jacket loaded with rice and vegetables is taken out of the boiling water and placed back on her protected shoulders and torso. She literally smokes her way out of the gallery to cool the food in the heavy, boiling garment she is wearing. When it has cooled down, Jot Fau begins to partially destroy her garment in order to gain access to the food it contains so that she can serve it to those around her who are hungry. With a small tool, she carefully and surgically opens the different compartments of her jacket. She offers small rations of rice and cabbage. An astonishing amount of food is thus released from the translucent and fragile fabric.

Through her action Jot Fau establishes a relationship between her body and that of the other. The viewer becomes part of the action. The creation of the link through food is the stake of this action. It contains questions about giving, transmission, survival, care, but also about motherhood.

 

As the artist was brought up with three brothers by her mother in a very modest environment, this action is doubly significant: "My strongest memories of my childhood are linked to food, to the expectation of it, to its sharing, to the excitement or disappointment it generated, sometimes to its lack. It was the gift of my mother on a daily basis."

 

What remains of this action is an emptied garment, torn, stiffened by the rice starch that is present in the fibres, as well as a video of the performance.