Co-commissioned by Serpentine and EAF (Edinburgh Art Festival), the performance on 21st and 22nd August, will examine the human condition and travel to First Stage Studios in Edinburgh on 23 August 2025 at EAF25.

Lewis Walker (they/them) is a London-born queer, non-binary movement artist. Their work spans theatre, film, fashion, music, and the commercial sector. In Bornsick they explore themes of humanhood, performativity through queerness and referencing.

Lewis Walker said: “Bornsick reflects the idea that we inherit illness—born into a system that shapes us before we can define ourselves. The gymnastics and dance performance explores identity as a compulsive act of referencing, an endless cycle of borrowing and reshaping of what came before.

Bornsick reflects the idea that we inherit illness, born into a system that shapes us before we can define ourselves. The gymnastics and dance performance explores identity as a compulsive act of referencing, an endless cycle of borrowing and reshaping of what came before.

We are taught movement, speech, and existence. The queer body, in particular, exists in a tension between conformity and freedom, constructing and reconstructing itself through cultural echoes. In a world built on repetition, in Bornsick, identity becomes an act of shapeshifting, a constant negotiation between imposed structures and self-determined transformation, never fixed but always in flux.

This idea comes to life in the performance as a body is built, piece by piece, a character assembled through learned movements, imposed behaviours, and artificial layers. Yet as these layers are stripped away, what remains is not a pure, original self, but another reference, another construct. Through conditioning, we create a machine. Through unlearning, we return to the animal. The cycle continues, revealing that there is no final, fixed truth, only endless adaptation.

Bornsick suggests that humanhood is a paradox, we search for something real, yet everything we are is borrowed. We long for authenticity, but if reality is only an echo of what came before, then individuality itself is an illusion, the self exists purely as a reflection.

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Image: Lewis Walker, Bornsick, 2025. Co-commissioned by Serpentine and EAF (Edinburgh Art Festival). Poster photography by: YISKID. Courtesy the artist, Serpentine and EAF.