Art has long been a dynamic medium of expression, reflection, and contestation. When viewed through the lens of performativity, art becomes an active process that shapes and is shaped by the world around it. By combining Michel Foucault’s theories of discursive practices and Judith Butler’s concept of performativity, we can explore how art functions as a dynamic act that constructs meaning, identities, and power relations.
In the context of our exhibition, we delve into the Xavier traditions of Goa, built over centuries through profound intimacies between Goans and St. Francis Xavier. We enter the pluriverse of Goycho Saib, where Goans construct embodied experiences, rituals, and sonic expressions of their devotion.
Judith Butler’s theory of performativity offers a complementary lens for understanding art. Performativity is the process by which identities and norms are constituted through repeated acts. Our exhibition, seen as a performative act, opens possibilities for displaying how Goycho Saib is a performative act.
Artworks are not static objects with inherent meaning but ongoing performances that gain significance through display, context, and audience engagement. We hope that the artworks will explore how Goans perform their intimacies with St. Francis Xavier.
When Foucault’s discursive practices meet Butler’s performativity, art emerges as a powerful site of both construction and disruption. Art is not a fixed product of discourses but an ongoing performance that can reinforce or destabilize them.
Our event-centric art exists within our Catholic faith, Goa, Goan-ness, and the presence of St. Francis Xavier. Viewed through the prism of performativity, it enables us to see new possibilities of being devotees of St. Francis Xavier, which will shape our ways of being human in Goa.
Art as performative is neither a passive reflection nor a solitary creation of a genius. It is an act—a doing—that emerges within discursive fields and gains life through listening, conversations, reception, and reinterpretation.
Our hope is that our exhibition becomes an event of grace and synodality, where art performs and constructs realities, identities, and relations, revealing the fragility of everything it inhabits. In this fusion of discourse and performativity, art becomes a living process: not just something to behold, but something to enact. The entire process can be tuned to enact synodality.
