Apply the Force: On Yma’s Massage Archive and the Pebble Stone Walking Line

Performance documentation of a space in fourteen traces. Photo by Tamir Lifshitz. Courtesy of the artist.

BY April Liu May 29th, 2026

At Aunty’s House Studios, inside the exhibition I’m a Cyborg, but That’s OK, Yma presented a site-specific performance project titled Massage Archive and the Pebble Stone Walking Line. The work began with a strange dissonance. Massage usually suggests relaxation, relief, and a familiar intimacy with the body. In Yma’s installation, the first impression was much rougher. Barbed wire cut through the room and marked out a risky space. Pebble reflexology mat were placed on the floor. Nearby, a suitcase was left open, with soft everyday clothes spreading out from it.

The scene made the massage feel uneasy from the beginning. The barbed wire carried a sense of danger, almost as if the space was protecting something while also exposing the performer and the audience to possible harm. The pebble mat recalled a familiar kind of bodily care in Chinese medicine and everyday wellness culture, though the actual feeling of stepping on them can be sharp and painful. The suitcase softened the scene. It brought in the feeling of travel, private belongings, and a life that has been packed and unpacked many times.

During the performance, Yma walked across the mat and wrote on the clothes from the suitcase. Her movement was slow, and the pain of the mats seemed to travel through the pace of her body. At the same time, an audio track played the voices of a Chinese immigrant massage worker speaking about their lives and labor. One voice said, “This is a super tiring job. Someone told me it is easier than working in a restaurant, but it is not.” Another voice recalled walking through the tropical jungle overnight.

These voices brought the work into a very specific world of labor. Massage became tied to the body that works, the body that travels, and the body that carries memory while continuing to serve others. The installation did not make massage appear as a peaceful act of healing. It allowed the word to absorb tiredness, danger, and the practical decisions people make in order to survive.

Yma invited audience members to experience massage through a handheld tool. The tool was applied to the body with pressure, creating a sensation that was intimate, mechanical, and slightly uncomfortable at the same time. The audience member became aware of their own body through force. It was a form of contact, though the contact was mediated by an object. This small distance mattered. The tool made the gesture feel less like personal comfort and closer to a procedure, a service, or a task being performed.

Performance documentation of a space in fourteen traces. Photo by Tamir Lifshitz. Courtesy of the artist.

At moments, while the audience member was still inside the experience of massage, Yma moved back toward the suitcase and continued writing down the words from the audio. This shift gave the performance a broken rhythm. The body was working in one place, while memory was being recorded in another. The performer seemed to move between the act of applying force to another person and the act of holding the voices of workers who had also lived through pressure, exhaustion, and movement across borders.

The suitcase became one of the quietest parts of the work. Clothes are soft, ordinary, and close to the body. Here, they became a surface for transcription. The voices from the audio did not stay in the air; they landed on fabric. In this gesture, Yma gave the workers’ speech a material place to rest. The writing felt temporary and fragile, like notes made during a pause between jobs, or like memories that return when the body is finally still for a moment.

Performance documentation of a space in fourteen traces. Photo by Tamir Lifshitz. Courtesy of the artist.

The pebble mat deepened this feeling. Reflexology is often described as good for the body, and many people know the painful pleasure of walking on a pebble mat. Yma’s repeated walking made that pain visible. Each step carried the promise of care through discomfort. It also echoed the stories in the audio, where migration appears as a possible path toward income and survival, while the actual route is filled with danger and bodily cost. The Pebble Stone Walking line made this contradiction physical. The body had to feel it before the mind could organize it.

Another part of the project, the Massage Archive, invited visitors to leave memories of giving or receiving massage. One note read: “I like the feeling of applying force deep in the muscle, that feels really new and gives me new sensation to experiment.” This sentence opens up the center of the work. Massage depends on pressure. Care enters the body through force. A hand, or a tool, can relieve soreness by pressing into it. Yma’s work stayed with that uncomfortable intimacy, where care and pain are held in the same gesture.