Pushing Up Daisies
Performance at Oakville Galleries as a part of exhibition Les Fleurs du Mal, curated by Karen Kraven Oakville, Canada
28 March 2026
A pamphlet found on the street asks the question: Do you worry about the fear of death?The question is grammatically specific. The question is not Do you worry about death?, but rather: Does the fear of death worry you?
The performance Pushing Up Daisies considers the fear of death as a symptom of Western society, where medicalization, social stigma, secularization, censorship of genocide, and self-optimization abstract one of the few experiences all living bodies share, with the privilege of time or distance, or through violent interruption.
In the corner of a room that is lit with theater lights that fade in and out and move, a stage waits for live intervention. In four acts, a two-sided puppet serves as a messenger from a threshold between life and death, where they sit in perpetuity.
- -Lili Huston-Herterich
This performance was originally made as a part of the installation Pushing Up Daisies, which consists of sculpture, synchronized lights, drawing, and video works. A selection of these works were also exhibited at Oakville Galleries.
An annotated script publication was available at Oakville Galleries. A digital version can be downloaded here.
Pushing Up Daisies is 40-minutes, with four 10-minute chapters:
- American Yoga, where a two-sided puppet has a crisis about broadcast death and their own mortality in a CorePower yoga class, while their other side tries to shut them up.
Towering People, where a puppet describes a dream of two interwoven funerals of public figures.
Death Bed, where a puppet explains the conditions in which they would like to die.
You Are A Stain, where a two-sided puppet sings a song with their puppeteer.
In the context of a weekend exhibition, the performances interrupted the exhibition twice daily.
