through Buffalo and its inequities

house two blocks over (photographed in the series) puts towels in the windows to combat drafts.

Janis presented “Duplex” as a way of encouraging self-research and broader dialogues about the topics raised.

“It’s all about observation. Just open your eyes to the idea and look around,” Janis said. “You can come across some really incredible discoveries that you might not have if you didn't make those connections and take the time to be mindful and put the dots together.”

Janis’ reception persevered through various distractions — an attention-stealing dog, an overly curious Spectrum reporter and a child screaming while being whisked away by his parent.

“Ariana Grande, is that you?” Vic quipped as the child was carried away, still yelling.

Furthering questions about systemic inequities in Buffalo, Janis’ piece spoke to broader social problems while also encouraging self-reflection. Janis believes duplexes are human, and vice versa. She chose to look at duplexes in the same way one looks at another person.

“It’s about to happen.”

“Any minute now.”

“Are you ready?”

These ominous lines boomed over the speakers at the Center for the Arts (CFA)’s lower art gallery this past Thursday, immersing the audience into a new and peculiar world. Bridget Moser’s “When I Am Through With You There Won’t Be Anything Left” was not a series of paintings, a dance or a play. It was something else entirely, something unfiltered, raw and unabashedly original.

As audience members took their seats, they faced a hand-painted set of pastel pink, purple and blue. Moser, a performance and video artist, emerged in matching purple shorts and a baby blue top, fitting into a soft, childlike aesthetic.

But once the show began, it quickly derailed into raunchiness, unpredictable body imagery and existential dread.

As a performance artist, Moser accessed deep levels of her psyche to portray profound ideas in humorous and often ridiculous ways.

Within the first few minutes, Moser pulled out two dismembered feet, wondering if there are human body parts in heaven. Then, she donned a pair of skin gloves, slapping them against her thighs while contemplating, “Is it bad to hate my mother-in-law’s tattoo?” and “Is it so bad to tell my roommate I’m not responsible for her boyfriend’s allergy?”

“We’re thinking about what it means to be a body. The one consistent material in the art that I make is my own body,” Moser said. “[I explore] the way that my body is coded and how that creates a lens through which I experience the world.”

After asking crucial questions about all the people she’s let down, Moser displayed a gaudy white wig “purchased at a country estate sale.” She monotonically shared that the wig makes her feel nauseous, and perhaps, might be “super weird and not normal.” Moser launched into a spiel satirizing the rich who have kitchen islands greatly from one area to the next. Inequity is hidden within the false outward equality of the identically structured duplexes.

Inspiration for “Duplex” came from Janis’ lower socio-economic upbringing as the daughter of two Polish immigrants in an isolated, rural area and her current residence. While Janis occupies a cozy student housing apartment built in 2016 on top of a nature park, her best friend in a

“They all look a little different on the outside and they’re all unique in their own way,” Janis said. “But they all fit this little shape that the human body could be alike to, this shape that we’ve fit ourselves into. And it’s not really fair when certain people get looked at differently, and they don’t fit into human quality anymore just because of their differences when their differences are just stylistic, not necessarily identity that they are no longer human.”

Email: alex.novak@ubspectrum.com bigger than most garages, pretend to like champagne and own Samsung Galaxy S23s — all while smacking herself with a loose foot and fighting off a wig.

Throughout her show, Moser philosophized about life with a fuzzy pink skeleton and a gigantic pool floatie of a man’s ripped abs. Later, she aggressively deflated the pool floatie before dancing awkwardly to a distorted clip of Taylor’s Swift’s “Shake It Off” — specifically the “got nothing in my brain” lyrics.

“I’m a very embarrassing person, but I just keep going,” Moser admitted midshow.

Despite its “embarrassing” exterior, Moser’s weirdness hides deep introspection. Her performance art is an avenue for airing out the inexplicable thoughts that everyone possesses, but rarely expresses.

“Nobody knows anybody beyond the skin,” Moser told a pair of feet during her performance. “And we are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own lonely skins for as long as we live on this Earth.”

Alongside writing, producing and starring in her performances, Moser creates and curates all the featured props. The pool floatie depicting a man’s body in a tiny speedo was a lucrative Ebay find, while the fur-covered skeleton was a painstakingly handmade “pandemic project.” Despite having many opportunities to sell the skeleton as a traditional artist might, Moser says she could never part with it. Her art may sometimes be silly, but it’s always heavily personal.

“There’s something about making some- thing that’s, at times, so stupid — as this is — that there are also these moments that come up that are very exciting to me,” Moser said. “Even if I’m not sure if other people will agree, the act of investigating that… is something that just makes being alive better.”

To put an end to her existential ramblings, Moser announced that she is going somewhere beyond what anyone knows. With that, she walked straight out of the gallery, leaving audience members dumbfounded.

“Performance art can be a hard sell. It just has a bad reputation. Does it deserve it? Sometimes, not always,” Moser said. “I mean, I love it.”

Email: alex.novak@ubspectrum.com

Email: arts@ubspectrum.com