No/Know, Clara Laratta
A mirrored image of a performance artist from the shoulders up. The female figure has shoulder-length dark hair and brown eyes. She is wearing a grey sweater, which can partially be seen at the top of the screen. She is hanging upside down. The heads are facing one another, creating the illusion of two identical faces nearly touching nose-to-nose against a red background. Throughout the piece, the artist repeatedly vocalizes the word 'no/know'.
Title: No/Know
Artist: Clara Laratta
Date: 2022
Medium/Materials: Performance art
Dimensions: (00:01:06) looped to (00:08:55)
Form/Genre: Video art
Key Terms/Subject/Tags: Embodiment; Transitions; Patient narrative; Disability
Artist Statement:
No/Know is a phonetic and physical meditation on the limits of inheritance and the erasure of the invisible. Clara Laratta performed this work hanging upside down, a reversal of the family tree, repeating the word "no" until the physical strain created breathlessness. This exhaustion arrived much faster than she anticipated, a sudden involuntary silencing that mirrors internal issues that arrive without warning, leaving her suspended in a body she is still trying to map.
This physical betrayal reflects the difficulty of navigating a fragmented internal dialogue where a medical roadmap is missing. Because autoimmune disabilities are often invisible, an assumption of normalcy is the general response. It creates a mask of normalcy, not by choice, but as a byproduct of a condition that remains hidden from the public eye.
Laratta’s work explores the linguistic tension between this external, not knowing, and an internal, embodied knowing passed down through generations. While the world assumes a state of health, her internal reality is one of constant negotiation. This creates a profound state of suspension. The "no" she repeats in the performance is the sound of her body's refusal to meet the world’s expectations of health, it’s the sound of the frustration she feels in being unable to do what she wants to, and it’s the fear that others will think it is something she can control but has chosen not to. Hanging in this state of reversal, Laratta embodies the voice of the unknown.
Cultural Context / Story Behind the Work:
This work is a reclamation of Laratta’s narrative as a patient and the sole witness to her disability. It’s an informal archive of this part of her story and responds to her lived experience with invisible disabilities, chronic illness and a missing medical roadmap that in some ways defines me. By performing a literal reversal of the family tree, she explores the transitions and limits of biological inheritance. The repetition of the spoken word no/know until she is physically unable to continue creates a tension that helps to center embodied differences. This performance critiques the social inequity of the assumption of normalcy, which confines individuals with invisible chronic illnesses to a mask of health while negotiating a body in crisis.
Rights for this Image:
This digital image is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. You are free to share it for non-commercial purposes, as long as you credit the artist.
Learn More:
Instagram: @claralaratta