Aysia Tse

BODY, GRATE AND TILE: The Politics of Pool, Sport and Space

BODY, GRATE AND TILE: The Politics of Pool, Sport and Space is a multimedia installation and research project that investigates swimming pools and aesthetic-based sport systems as sites of political tension and embodied inquiry.

“Drawing from lived experience, feminist theory, and the socio-political histories of synchronized swimming and public pools in North America, Tse examines how artistic swimming facilitates the gendering of young female, trans and queer athletic bodies. Through video, installation and poetic reflection, the work interrogates how pools function as training grounds and performance stages where beauty, body regulation and self-discipline are entangled.By analyzing the preparation, aftermath and often unseen “in-between” phases of performance, BODY, GRATE AND TILE troubles the idea of body as spectacle and reveals the emotional, mental and physical realities that shape the sport – including the impacts of perfectionism, body awareness, invisibilized labour and struggle. The project complicates the dialogue about which bodies are seen, supported, and applauded in the athletic spaces, and those that are not.”