Why Language Fails: Deb Margolin’s Reclamation of Silence

Feminist performance artist Deb Margolin is well known for her loquacious and witty performances. Most recently, however, her focus has been on the use of silence in her explorations of the failure of language in performance. In recent pieces such as Index to Idioms and O Yes I Will, Margolin challenges feminist ideas of absence as well as patriarchal standards of language through a reclamation of silence.