A Study on Waitressing: Stage, Backstage, and Performative Realities
Text by Rocco Venezia
In Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Maurice Merleau-Ponty argues that the body is not merely a passive object observed by others, but an active subject that shapes and is shaped by its surroundings. It is through the body that we navigate social spaces, perform roles, and reconcile the visible with the hidden. This philosophy finds a poignant echo in Eleonora Agostini’s A Study on Waitressing, which offers a rich meditation on labour, identity, and the interplay between public performance and private self.
At the heart of the work lies Agostini’s quiet observations of her mother since childhood, witnessing her dual roles as a mother and woman worker in their family restaurant. The project unfolds as an interdisciplinary exploration, blending photography, archival images, video, audio, and text to interrogate the three dimensions of theatrical experience—stage, backstage, and performance.
The stage is where the waitress performs her role for the public gaze, embodying composure, professionalism, and the expectations of others. In Agostini’s images, her mother—poised and attentive—represents the archetype of the ideal worker: affable, efficient, and invisible in her personal complexity. Yet, these portraits resist mere documentation. They are deliberately constructed to reveal the fragility of the staged persona, inviting the viewer to question the authenticity of the public-facing self.
Behind the backstage curtains, the unseen labour unfolds—complaints, exhaustion, and fleeting moments of reprieve. This hidden space symbolises the private realm where vulnerabilities emerge, away from the scrutinising eyes of customers. Through intimate portraits, archival materials, and her mother’s written anecdotes, Agostini foregrounds the tension between public strength and private fragility.
The performative dimension operates as the connective tissue between the stage and the backstage. It is in the gestures, the rehearsed phrases, and the seamless transitions between emotions that the performance of identity emerges. Drawing on Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical theory, Agostini positions her mother’s shifting personas as a critique of the societal roles imposed on women, particularly those in feminised labour. The performance is not merely an act; it is a negotiation between expectation and reality, where the body becomes, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty would say, the primary site of meaning-making and interaction with the world.
Agostini’s work challenges the viewer to see beyond the polished surface of the stage. Her mother’s figure is not only the subject of representation but also a co-author of the narrative, her gestures and movements creating a shared language that transcends time. The interplay between archival images and contemporary staging blurs the boundaries of memory and performance, creating a dialogue that questions the ownership of the image and the legacy of gestures passed through generations.
In an age increasingly defined by consumerism and self-representation, A Study on Waitressing asks us to consider: What lies behind the polished performance of the everyday labouring body? How do the gestures shaped by work and necessity reflect and resist the roles we inhabit? What happens when the audience looks beyond the stage? By dissolving the boundaries between the visible and the hidden, Agostini’s work reveals the body as a site of negotiation, a space where our perception of the staged and the real becomes fluid.
