Lewis Walker’s Endurance Gymnastics

Can we ever break free from the mores of the society that birthed us? This was the question posed by artist and former world-champion gymnast Lewis Walker in their performance Bornsick (2025). Staged inside a columned 19th-century chapel in east London, the gruelling routine, which lasted roughly an hour, didn’t so much answer this question as complicate it. Using improvised, iterative choreography, Bornsick channelled the emotional drama of Walker coming to terms with their queer, non-binary identity in the otherwise rigidly dictated world of gymnastics.

As the audience entered the space, Walker lay on the floor, shrouded in a sheet of semi-transparent latex. From the balcony above, hypnotherapist Michele Occelli commanded Walker’s psychological state and breathing in real time via bellowed instructions. Eventually, the lights dimmed, save for a concentrated spotlight on Walker. 

Suddenly, an off-stage suction machine began rumbling. The latex sheet closed in on Walker, their breathing increasingly laboured as they sucked precious air through a makeshift snorkel. At one point, they let out an audible gasp. Staged or not, it propelled viewers into an immediate state of vigilance. I watched on, uneasily. Clad in only a pair of padded motorcycle shorts, Walker  rose to their haunches as the suction eased, before lunging forward onto their knees with arms splayed. Like a reptile hatching, they clawed their way out of the latex and dragged themself onto a reflective silver crash mat.

From here on, Walker’s movements became erratic: each began as an elegant gesture but was cut short. The artist clambered towards stage left, doused their body in chalk and began several excruciating laps around the stage. Initially dragging their body with their arms, they assumed increasingly technical movements: bridge-position walking, handstand walking, handsprings, somersaults. Throughout, the spotlight traced their movements, capturing the smog of chalk dust as it fell from their body with the impact of every action. One lunging skip recalled the tripping of a wounded deer. As Walker became visibly sweatier, the muscles on their body increased in prominence, contracting along their neck and across their flanks.

As Walker steadied themself between each lap, geeing up to go again, it felt as if something inside them was being expunged

Their appearance was that of a person at once incredibly fit yet utterly broken. The latter state evoked the immediate sense of failure that all-too-often accompanies a queer person’s entrance into adolescence. The former reflected Walker’s many years of dogged athletic commitment, which perhaps served to deflect that same sense of failure by, instead, strengthening their self-esteem in a highly impactful yet constrained institutional context where physical exertion and excellence create a short-term sense of identity, but softness and care fall by the wayside. 

Speaking to Walker afterwards, they told me that, while some of their performances weren’t conceived to be physically challenging, this one was: they had wanted to enter another state of consciousness. For the audience, too, it was testing. As Walker steadied themself between each lap, geeing up to go again, it felt as if something inside them was being expunged. If they kept going, surely they would reach their goal: a sublimation point where there was nothing left to prove, where their body would be liberated from the rigidity of gymnastic training. But this was never realized. 

In lieu of vocalizing feeling, Walker’s physical motions constituted an affective language. Yet, the artist constantly frustrated the linguistic possibilities of this vernacular, as if to echo the idea that, much like a professional gymnast’s routine, the mute performer has had everything predetermined for them. When, towards the end, Walker landed a front flip, Occelli began counting out loud each subsequent flip until the 20th, when he stopped, as had been preordained.

Walker grabbed the crash mat and began dropping it back down on the latex – an action they repeated multiple times. This segued into a sloppy falling and rising sequence, with Walker worming around the stage and eventually taking to its centre to handstand in box splits. Finally, Occelli returned to their altar, drawing out the consonants in every word, slurring the end of each sentence: ‘Please, please, please take me back … I am not one without the pain of others.’ After much elaborate toiling beneath strobes, Walker returned to their crash mat, stationed at the start, still stuck in a performance orchestrated by society.

Lewis Walker’s Bornsick was commissioned by Serpentine and Edinburgh Art Festival. It premiered at The Round Chapel, London, on 21 and 22 May and will travel to Edinburgh Art Festival on 23 August

^{Main image: Lewis Walker, Bornsick, 2025, performance still. Courtesy: the artist, Serpentine and Edinburgh Art Festival; photograph: Genevieve Reeves}