Here are a selection of projects that I have worked on over the years.
Performance (20 minutes) Sad Clown is an emotional excavation that bridges the absurd and the profound, using the timeless figure of the clown as a vessel for collective release. Inspired by Emmet Kelly’s iconic sad clown, with a drag-infused twist, Clara Saito’s clown is both a relic of tradition and a modern disruptor, blending theatricality with raw humanity. The makeup becomes a transformative mask, an emblem of exaggerated sorrow that transcends time, rooted in the haunting beauty of bygone vaudeville and the radical self-expression of drag. The performance unfolds as a dynamic interplay between structured spectacle and raw emotional exchange. Lip-syncing, an act both deeply performative and intensely personal, becomes a conduit for channeling grief, joy, and longing. These moments are juxtaposed with somatic practices that invite the audience into the clown’s world, breaking the fourth wall in cathartic communion. Together, audience and performer scream their sadness away, releasing a collective weight that words alone cannot carry. Grounded in the turbulence of our times, Sad Clown confronts the inescapable sadness brought by today’s crises, personal, political, and environmental. The clown’s struggle mirrors our own: how do we navigate grief, despair, and uncertainty in a way that propels us forward rather than paralyzing us? The piece invites us to sit with our sorrow, not to wallow but to witness and transform it into resilience and bring it to the streets! Through its reinterpretation of burlesque and the clown tradition, Sad Clown reclaims the stage as a space for vulnerability and rebellion. Moving between presence and detachment, humor and heartache, Clara Saito’s performance redefines what it means to laugh and cry in a world on fire. In Sad Clown, sadness isn’t just an emotion; it’s an energy. One that can be screamed, danced, and sung into a strange, hopeful freedom.
Performance (30 minutes) In Public Space, Clara Saito has been collaborating with members of the latinx collective Papaya Kuir, Patri Roa Johansen and Nadia Bekkers. Together they developed allegorical characters and a game in a tv show format as a response to the Amazon forest fires and the involvement of the Netherlands in deforestation.The project is inspired by the techniques of the Theatre of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal, as well as the book Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics by José Esteban Munoz, but also by drag and telenovela. This show is a collaborative effort to use theatre and performance as a means of exploring and addressing issues related to queer activism and social justice.
Performance, 40 minutes (…) if identities were no longer fixed… a new configuration of politics would surely emerge from the ruins of the old. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity sh*d*ws is about transforming, never becoming, dissociating, transiting identies, questionning genders, never fixing, it’s about entering the paranoia of the other’s perception of oneself but never fully believing it, playing dumb, escaping meaning, it is about who you are when you don’t belong, it is about who you are when you don’t have a country, it’s about who you are when your mother tongue fails, it’s about finding who you are when your father’s tongue has no more use, it’s about who you are when the folklore of your native land is not the same than any in your genealogical tree but it is still the first one you lived, it’s about multiple diagnosis, it’s about having symptoms of every mental illness, it is about multiplicity, it is about accumulation, it is about excess, it is about having ancestors in every continent, it is about what you are when claiming an identity automatically erases another part of yourself, it is to choose to not claim anything, it is about acceptance, it is about accepting that your ancestors disagree on their plans for you, it is about accepting that your community will always be the community of the displaced, it is accepting that we will never automatically understand each other and that it will always be through multiple encounters, multiple drunk nights, multiple mistakes that we will maybe get a glimpse of each other’s lives. with musician Rafa Barreto
Performance, 20 minutes After starring as herself funding the avant-garde revolution in the acclaimed cult movie “A Piece of Dada”, after performing questions about study and community as tools againt capitalism in the show “Towards Anal”, and after making an in-depth vimeo tutorial on the theme of “How to Cure Bacterial Vaginosis”, Lady Dada is back at the event “Frenemy” (Rozenstraat Gallery, NL) to share her knowledge about “How to be Likable”, a camp and entertaining performance about how to be social again in the aftermath of Covid, while simultaneously pushing into a toxic positivity vibe.
Movie, 30 minutes The film frames the symbolic principles that govern our lived reality as myths: the myth of Switzerland, the myth of nation, the myth of categorisable identity; echoing Barthes diagnostic of the ideological utility of mythologies. Yet, instead of simply critiquing the ideological myth, the lmmakers propositionally present “gossip” as an alternative method of interpretation, perception, and storytelling. If myth is ideological, then gossip is social. Gossip is a verbal practice of social bonding, an informal mode of information sharing associated with women and marginalised communities which leaves room for interpretation and adaption. Gossip makes no declarations of universal truths. It’s about time gossip was reclaimed from the demonised connotations bestowed upon it by the myth-making institutes. rough both form and content, the lm presents “gossip” as a method for navigating these mythologies in a way that reinstates the complex agency of the “self” within them. By privileging a form of “storytelling from below” Crossing the Dunes AKA Gossip adeptly tethers the intimate to the political, the theoretical to practice, and the symbolic to the embodied, whilst providing abundant conceptual space for their generative entanglements. Movie: Clara Saito and Livio Casanova Text: Bethany Crawford Thanks to: Polly Wright, Bethany Crawford, Ciaran Wood,
12 minute video, 3x Screenprints on fabric, performances In this work, Lady Dada, a rockstar in performance arts, takes into her own hands to explain to her audience the mysteries of the vaginal bacterias and how to keep it all in balance, in a playful video containing scientific facts, somatic improvisations and 3d liquid objects. Her tutorial is framed in between two long banners portraying diverse flashy bacterias, a royal set-up to remind that the body will always rule us first.
Performance, 30 minutes Lady Dada is a rockstar in performance art. After making several tutorial-performances (soon on Youtube) and starring in the movie A Piece of Dada, Dada comes back to life as an avatar and attempts to dismantle capitalism through movement. What are the choices of movement that a body makes in response to the multiplicity of information and questions we are facing every day? Where does study start? Why do I have pain in new body parts about every week since few years? What does it mean to perform dissociation? Sister Emanuelle had the same zodiac placements than me in sun sign, rising and moon. Towards Anal is about imagining ways to dismantle capitalism while asking ourselves questions to help deconstruct bodies and mind that have been shaped to accommodate such a system. Going back to important questions that thinkers such as Fred Moten, Stephano Harney, Paul Preciado have touched upon, as well as choreographers such as Deborah Hay or singer Anitta, Dada genuinely makes the move to formulate some answers through dance all of this in a camp/humouristic and overall confused style. Concept: Clara Saito Performance: Clara Saito and Matthieu Blond Thanks to: Hypatia Vourloumis, Quinsy Gario, Leon Filter
Film, 30 minutes In a city torn apart by a mad scramble for celebrity, Lady Dada seemingly has it all. The enigmatic performance artist lures her audience by ingesting vast amounts of money in her spectacular shows promising fame and unbound pleasure. While the public is captivated by her special gift, she has no bigger fan than Madame Gram - a glamorous but unhinged opera tycoon who is hell-bent on convincing Dada to be the star of her ‘Popera’. But Dada has a dirty secret. She doesn’t just eat the dollar bills - she shits them, too. Via the underground sewer system, her faeces are funding an avant-garde revolution that will topple the Opera regime once and for all. Or so she thinks… A Piece of Dada is a collective film project which was triggered by the themes and practices that they have explored with their Dutch Art Institute study group through an experimental methodology of production. The movie has been written, filmed, and acted by Clementine Edwards, Lukas Q Hoffmann, Tirza Kater, Rabea Ridlhammer, Clara Saito, Giorgos Tsiongas and Wilfred Tomescu with the support of Pauline Curnier Jardin and Sara Giannini.
Drag performance Kurt Dickriot is a drag king character well known in the Amsterdam queer scene. He was born out of the need to make fun of boys who think that they don’t need to do anything to look cool, just stand there and be. In his shows he is often presenting in a comical way his habitual self-destructive relation to pleasure dominated by alcohol and masturbation. He usually lip syncs to dramatic boy songs, such as Justin Timberlake or Blue, often after a break-up. By the end of his career, he tried to improve and got sober, but with soberness came unknown feelings such as feelings of guilt. Out of guilt he started to cut his dick in pieces and offer them to the audience members but after a few months of doing so, he got an infection and unfortunately left this world forever. In his last shows he shared the stage a few times with Saito’s other alter egos, Lady Dada and The Confused Version of Clara Saito Concept and performance: Clara Saito
Event, multiple days Diva is a dog. The dog is the artist performing Diva for a month. Caretakers were able to volunteer to take Diva for walks in a place of their choice. During this month a camera followed these characters in their different habitats. This experiment generated questions about productivity and instincts in addition to sticks and holes. But is a dog’s existence then about questioning? Diva the dog is a work that imagine how a human would live without social construct, basing their actions on their instincts, desires and senses. Concept and performance: Clara Saito Camera: Deniz Buga Editing: Deniz Buga, Matias Daporta, Christopher Tym and Clara Saito Sound: Alexandra AV
Event, performance, 90 minutes Black Circus is a collective of performers incarnating different visions of queer and anarchist thoughts and ideas. This show features individual and group performances that range from dance and music to spoken word and robots. Burlesque or cabaret can serve as a reference, but Black Circus always aim to push the boundaries of known disciplines and blur the lines between cheesy, camp and performance art. Usually the show culminates in a party where spectators and performers can meet and transform together. Black Circus is based in Amsterdam and started as a performance night in the former squatted social space Antarctica in 2012. The performance night and parties that followed became popular and were presented in different alternative venues such as Vrankrijk and the Ship of Fools. In 2016 a regular group emerged and started to tour other countries as well. Concept: Clara Saito With: Bear Silver, Samuel Hughes Eddy, Erika P. Martin , Julian Muller, Nicolas Roses, Emy Fem and Clara Saito
Event, multiple days 7 days of confused superheroes and experimental anarchism. This festival was created as an extension of the Title is a Drawing (…) with works curated in link with the practice of anarchism developed by the artist. Concept and curation: Clara Saito With works by: Anonymous museum for unsigned works, Jessica, Alexander Nieuwenhuis, Petros Panagiotis Orfanos, Noha Ramadan, S.M. Snider, Cleide Saito and Clara Saito link
Performance, 60 minutes #2 revisits the practice of anarchism of #1 but in interaction between 4 characters. The characters move inside the objectified chaos, a defined space inside the theater where they can make use of a microphone, internet, rest in a safe space or decide to enter the world. Concept and curation: Clara Saito With works by: Anonymous museum for unsigned works, Jessica, Alexander Nieuwenhuis, Petros Panagiotis Orfanos, Noha Ramadan, S.M. Snider, Cleide Saito and Clara Saito
Performance/Installation, 60 minutes #1 is at first a performance which seeks for absolute freedom. It proposes a practice of anarchism for the body and the mind as a crash test before applying it to society. It is an attempt to let go of fear, judgement and frame in order to find a non-yet existing place. From this idea 6 points/guidelines were cultivated: How to create a theory for a practice that doesn’t want rules. How to not be ideological. How to develop anarchy in practice and thoughts simultaneously. How to not create a system. How to allow a theory where it is possible for that same theory to sabotage itself. Avoiding master/slave, leader/ follower situations, whatever the leader is. Leader can be emotions/ the ego/ the brain/ judgment. The way out can have sometimes to do with play. Or with finding a third entrance. Or the third entrance is play. From allowing chaos, a form of order is built organically. Go for desires. Start from different perspectives, not having a center point. Search for/ or accept external unexpected or expected inputs. Stay independent. Concept: Clara Saito Performance: Clara Saito and guests Outside eye: Jan Ritsema
