Avril Avilas is a comic and tattoo artist, often working around feminism, queer, friendship, sexuality, gendered violence, childhood in her comics. Avril is one of the organisers of the Alt X festival in Brussels, a festival around and about alternative genders and sexualities. A strong wind wherever she goes. Ambre is part of their life, a sweet fluffy dog.

Tendresse is a one on one performance where the performer Avril Avilas and a volunteer from the audience exchange tender gestures and talk on a bed that they make and undo together to create a space for their intimacy. They’ll exchange thoughts on tenderness’s economy and physical relationships.
Who are we allowing to give us physical tenderness? To whom are we giving it? How could we open up conversations about the multiple relationships where tender gestures exist, beyond couples and families? What is needed in order to give and receive
a tender touch?
Touch is a basic need however it is not being met for many people and even less during this pandemic. There are different qualities in the touch that we can receive, tender touch can make us feel ourselves, feel the limits of our bodies. The focus put in these gestures makes it a caring moment where our bodies can relax, weight in the hand of the other, a moment of loving calm.
In her work 'Décroissance Sexuelle', Julie Delporte highlights the words of a survivor from sexual abuse, she said to Delporte 'La Tendresse est Partout' Tenderness is everywhere. If tenderness is everywhere how come we are not receiving it? How come we
find ourselves sometimes unable to dispense it? On what channel should we connect ourselves to in order to receive it and feed it back?

Letting go is a ritual for externally and non-threateningly materialising an entangled
emotional situation that a person wishes to part with in order to change its shape and
meaning. Two participants enable the work. There is the Shaper, a person in charge of the embroidery process. Then there is the Cutter, a person who asks the Shaper to begin the process. The Cutter must find a word that represents what they wish to let go, it cannot be a person's name. This word is to be embroidered by the Shaper in the waistband of their costume. In the meantime the Cutter is invited to empty their thoughts by concentrating on the candle flames and their breathing. Once the embroidery is done, the Shaper will give the Cutter scissors who will then take a moment to cut the threaded-word. Cut after cut the shape of the word changes, the threads shall remain in the fabric or fall and create new shapes. The Shaper and the Cutter will look at the scar left in the textile, what forms are made by the pieces of string. The Cutter can choose to keep the threads or leave them with the Shaper. When the Cutter is ready they will extinguish the candles, the Shaper will follow this movement and the ritual will end.