Patience & Penitentia, 2026

40 day durational performance by Ida Sophia

Accompanied by: Ashton Malcolm, Sarah Neville, OAKEY and Isobel Stolinski

7 hours per day, June 25 to August 22nd, 2026

Patience & Penitentia is a durational performance about silence; inflicted and endured, witnessed and repaired. It centres on the silent treatment, as given and received by women.

“Ida Sophia’s installation and durational performance Patience and Penitentia explores the painful and damaging experience of relational withdrawal – the silent treatment – in a work that enacts the power dynamics, strategies of control and form of punishment at its core. This work by Berlin-based South Australian artist expands on her earlier interest in performance and the exploration of extreme psychological states and limits of endurance. Over the span of the exhibition a participatory ritual performed by the artist and a select number of performers will see Sophia incorporate elements of sound, language, movement and gesture to publicly transfigure private suffering through collective release.”

Photographs/Performance Evidence co-authored

by Ida Sophia (Artist) and Vilma Leino (Editor)

Patience and Penitentia is a project supported by the Government of Australia through Creative Australia, as well as The City of Adelaide and The Australian Cultural Fund.

Behind the Scenes Materiality: Making the Rose Chain

10s of thousands of rose petals were donated from the personally tended gardens from women across South Australia. This crucial material creates the counter narrative to the corrosive affect of the silent treatment. The garden represents long term maintenance and care. It represents our capacity to expect and accept the ‘thorns’ and our appreciation of the blooms. It stands for an understanding of the seasons of life, of the resiliance that plants and people have and the symbiotic relationship that ultimately transforms over time. The roses speak to womens material culture and my own childhood, languishing and playing among the many bushes women in my family had planted. I would become caught in the thorny branches in attempts at diving nose first into the fragrance of the petals. It is here, in the South Australian garden that I situate our capacity for repair over time and offer a space to consider our capacity to work through that which is both prickly and enveloping.

With special thanks to the 20+ south australian women who donated rose petals and shared their stories. Each of you is deeply engrained in this work.

Ida Sophia photographed in her studio by Joseph James Francis, 2024.