Gala was somebody that Dali kind of held in such high regard and if she didn't exist and
he didn't have this relationship with her the work that he created wouldn't be what
it was and what it is he actually signed this painting with Gala's name 'Gala Salvador Dali'
Hello I'm Celeste and i'm here today to perform not your muse at the Tate Modern
You've mistaken me for your masterpiece
Gilding me
So I try
The painting that i'm performing in response to is Metamorphosis of Narcissus by Salvador Dali
the reason why I chose his painting there's so much depth to it and I think he's referring to
the narcissist who fell in love with their own reflection in some water and drowned so I think that
there's that to it which is obviously like quite a ghastly story but you can understand why an artist
would be so intrigued for the performance we've taken inspiration from the painting in a number
of different ways. This was actually made by a lady called Sarah Mccormack all of these different
shapes that are so sort of like off-kilter really took me into this sort of surrealist world
this mirrored floor is representing the lake or the river that narcissists kind of saw his
reflection and fell in love with the flower is actually one of the most important things because
the daffodil is the flower of the narcissist and the flower in this Salvador Dali painting
and another way he refers to gala in this piece of work is with a poem that accompanies the painting
in which he says, 'Gala, my Narcissus'. I think on one hand it's very beautiful the flower kind of
like blooming out of this kind of horrible death and that is something that is very beautiful and
blossom and bloom definitely suggests as well the evolution of a person but then I think the uglier
side of it where we bring those two parallels together of the narcissist and gala it's perhaps
Dali recognising that maybe that there is a role reversal in the muse and the artist relationship
where actually he recognises he's actually the vessel for her own narcissism where she gets
some sort of sense of empowerment in knowing that her ideas and it's actually her brain
that's filtering into what into what he's doing and she's guiding him and steering him and perhaps
even manipulating him at points for her own purpose and I think that he obviously can
recognise the mechanics of that at points and you can sort of hear that and see that in his writing
and in his work too but it's probably something he recognises he needs you know not your muse for me
what the word muse means is somebody I guess that ultimately like they're empowered in a
sense but then there's also a part of themselves which they're powerless and sort of helpless over
because it's someone else's ideas are being sort of implanted upon them. 'You've mistaken me for
your masterpiece gilding me so I try', that was something where I really intentionally wanted to
like create the imagery of being in a golden frame but also it have some meaning in the emotion of of
what I was saying not just sort of like creating an image and that line to me means there's this
person that's trying to turn you to gold and they're putting in absolutely everything they can
into you to make you this thing that they think that you are and it's not necessarily something
that you see you possess or you have within yourself but you feel that this person recognises
it within you so you try to live up to what they are sort of putting out there for you and
that's definitely been my experience it says to anybody that attempts to sort of mould me or place
their ideas upon me in a way that isn't truthful to me it just says to them that it's not theirs to do that
But I'm not your, I'm not your muse
But I'm not your, not your muse