Palimpsest unfolds as a double performative gesture around the tension between institution, body, and documentation. The term evokes the act of superimposed writing, of covering without erasing, of traces that persist even when concealed.

In the first action, the artist embodies a character carrying balloons, positioning herself in front of the Ministry of Health. The simple act of remaining still transforms those fragile objects into a veil that covers the state’s emblems. The gaseous lightness of the balloons contrasts with the solidity of the building, opening a symbolic fissure in the language of the official. The camera, fixed on a tripod across the street, reveals another layer of friction: the artist is simultaneously the body performing and the body documenting, both interpreter and archivist. This duality displaces the work into a field of fundamental questions: must a performance be documented? What remains of the ephemeral once it is translated into photography, video, or text? In this tension between presence and memory, the work emerges as an essay on the need—and impossibility—of fixing that which, by nature, dissolves.

The second action expands the palimpsest through a play of displacement. Here, the character unfolds into the bodies of the artist’s daughter and niece, fused beneath an orange fabric that erases their faces and transforms them into a collective, faceless being. They ignite an orange smoke flare—the kind used in rescue contexts, as a signal of emergency, a call for visibility. In this case, the artist abandons simultaneity to fully assume the role of photographer and director; other bodies act in her representation, while she inhabits the gaze. The performance thus shifts toward delegation, substitution, and critical distance.

Between both actions, a field of resonances is woven: the palimpsest is not only about covering what is written, but also about rewriting the roles of author and record, questioning hierarchies between document and presence, permanence and impermanence. The state building endures, solid, as an immovable support; upon it are inscribed fragile gestures—balloons, smoke, borrowed bodies—that evoke the ephemeral, the unconscious, and the poetic. Within this dialectic, the work signals an alert: every inscription, no matter how official or enduring it claims to be, can be covered, displaced, rewritten.