Hannah Wilke’s piece “Gestures,” which was made in 1974, is a "series of performance-based works in which she faces the camera in an extreme close up and performs repetitive physical actions" (eai) that take up the duration of a thirty minute period. The length of this video is much longer than the other and due to this fact the now common theme of endurance is in play again. With the artist having to poke and prod her face for a half an hour the element is with out question present but with out the pain involved the endurance could be seen as just performing for the incredible length of the video.
This piece and Bruce Nauman’s are quite similar on the surface, because she is "kneading and pulling her skin as if it were a sculptural material. Often her “gestures” of rubbing her hands over her face, smiling so hard that she appears to be in pain, and sticking out her tongue can take on a loaded meaning when seen in the context of gender performance." (eai, electronic arts intermix)
This is one of the main separators of Nauman’s piece and Wilke’s. The fact that she is a woman therefore makes it a “gender performance.” You may ask why is it not a “gender performance” when a man performs? This question goes back to the beginning when the artists were all male and women were the subject matter not able to make art. So with our society not keen on the fact that when anyone performs they are performing their gender we will still see works by women labeled as “gender performances.”
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