Red Thread to Hold – Cherry Velour

Red Thread to Hold – Cherry Velour

Red Thread to Hold is a durational performance concerned with exploring how physical endurance, consent, and relational care can intersect within a performance context. Informed by kink practice and somatic methodologies, the piece centres on the act of hook suspension as a way of examining how the body can become a site for trust, vulnerability, and mutual responsibility.

Across up to two hours, Cherry Velour’s body will be suspended in a web of knotted rope, held aloft only by hooks pierced through her skin. This state of suspension is not presented as spectacle; it is an invitation to consider what it means to be held: by rope, by flesh, by the gaze of others. The work asks how pain might function not as a signal of harm, but as a tool for communication, transformation, and consensual intimacy.

The performance does not aim to provide answers. Instead, it opens space for witnessing. Through slow, sustained presence, it resists passive viewership and builds a shared environment in which bodily reactions – such as tremors, breath, or stillness – become part of a live negotiation between artist and audience.

Artist 
Cherry Velour is a queer Palestinian-American artist based in Brighton. Her work spans performance, body-based installation, and collaborative process. She is interested in practices that explore transformation through discomfort, with a focus on care, surrender, and power.

Please note: this performance includes blood and body suspension.