Tender Buttons is a performative reinterpretation of Gertrude Stein's seminal work of the same title. Drawing upon the poetic materiality of Stein's language, the performance immerses the audience in a world where objects acquire autonomy, words become detached from their utilitarian function, and everyday reality is transformed into a surreal landscape open to multiple interpretations.

At the same time, the work offers a critical re-engagement with Stein herself, examining the tension between her radical aesthetic innovations and the controversial political positions and associations that surrounded her during the Second World War. Rather than delivering a historical verdict, the performance seeks to illuminate the discontinuities that can exist between an artist's work and the complexities of their biography.

A pivotal moment within the performance is the incorporation of a scene from The Children's Hour, in which Audrey Hepburn's character is confronted with a revelation that irrevocably alters her relationship with her closest friend and collaborator. This cinematic fragment functions as a moment of disclosure, foregrounding silence, desire, and the social construction of sexual identity. Its inclusion enters into dialogue with Stein's openly lesbian relationship with Alice B. Toklas, not as a biographical reconstruction but as a site for exploring visibility, concealment, and the politics of the gaze.

Through the interplay of text, body, objects, and moving image, Tender Buttons unfolds as a performative space in which language disintegrates, memory is continuously rewritten, and history emerges not as a fixed narrative but as an unstable terrain of perpetual reinterpretation.