Micah Rustichelli Performs A Body Which Draws Itself

Micah Rustichelli is a Meanjin (Brisbane) based queer multidisciplinary artist most known for their work in painting and performance art. Having developed their artistic works in these areas for over six years they are now preparing to debut their latest upcoming project in Brisbane next year. 

Micah has been working and developing their practice exploring the relationships between the self, the body and the exterior reality to examine “the capability of the body to both contain and express its own idea of self.”

They have created powerful and engaging performance installation pieces that challenge their audience to think about how we view our bodies and the world around us. 

A Body Which Draws Itself

Now Micah will be presenting two projects including A Body Which Draws Itself and Demon Rhythm for one night only at Brisbane’s Metro Arts. These endurance-based works will “together explore different ends of this uniquely human obsession” and will see Micah creating paintings using their body and the tools attached to it. “How does this body represent itself when my thought process and my decision making is taken out of the equation” they ask. 

A Body Which Draws Itself looks to be a poignant performance that will challenge its audience to think about who we are how we see ourselves.

“From an artist tied in knots, testing if the body can draw its own image, to a cacophony of painted images stolen from the internet, this double-bill calls into question the value we place on images of ourselves, others and the world around us” reads the event description. 

Demon Rhythm

Demon Rhythm forms part of a larger scale project that Micah has been working on for several months. After discovering that their artwork had been taken from their Instagram and used to train AI software to replicate their work Micah came up with the Demon Rhythm project. Across several months Micah has been creating 1000 individual uniform sized paintings which will be used as data points to attempt to train AI how to replicate their work, an exercise that seeks to “quantify human labour against AI output.”

Recently Micah competed against over 60 competitors across several weeks in the very first Altimate.Showdown event, managing to win the competition, becoming the very first Altimate.Showdown champion. 

A Body Which Draws Itself will take place on the 29th of February 2024 tickets are available online here: 

You can find more information about Micah on their website.