Kira O’Reilly’s Menopause Gym is a sculptural work in making. It is an evolving situation, an unexpected play of endurance, strength and elegance that toys with the audience’s expectations and gaze. With an outstanding articulation, O’Reilly performs the body as a relation shaping, and being shaped by, its environment. The transitional process of the body in menopause, unfolds as a field of vibrating possibilities.

Heartbreaking, hilarious, intelligent and challenging, the performance cuts from one situation to another like a knife. In its sphere, O’Reilly sweats and breathes against the resistance of the objects, the situation, of gravity and time. She transitions into a goddess, moving the gym balls like planets into cosmic constellations. In a blink of an eye, she lands into a Buster Keatonesque slapstick mode with the resistance bands. The decades of rigorous artistic practice, of life, are graciously present as O’Reilly throws herself into this impossible workout.

Essi Kausalainen, September 2024