NARCISSISTER
ARTIST, ACTIVIST, and PERFORMANCE ARTIST
Narcissister questions fetishism, particularly sexual fetishism, notorious in fixing of racist and gendering stereotypes. Rather than abandon this contaminated site, Narcissister dives into the muck, into the depths of fantasy and fetish, exposing and deconstructing their power.
Both Narcissister's name and mask reflect a double dynamic created with the work. The mask, a repurposed 1965 wig display form, falls within the narrow conception of femininity and beauty currently predominant in the culture. The mask draws in the viewer; simultaneously, the mask – a tool for acquiring and establishing superiority and separation – pushes the viewer away. Similarly, the name Narcissister, while evoking the dysfunction of narcissism, also connotes – through humorous punning – both sisterhood and concerns beyond self.
Narcissister's strong feminine presence and confrontation of sexual and racial stereotypes is grounded in her own feminism and background as an African American/Sephardic Jewish woman. Staying true to her essential self (symbolized by the mask), Narcissister enacts the shifting of roles and identities skillfully and gracefully, a nod to the need to surrender to impermanence (a belief she practices in her study of Buddhism). Wearing the mask, and portraying a variety of roles, Narcissister provides her a visceral and kinesthetic experience of seeing the world through another's eyes, of seeing another point of view, thereby allowing for a broader transpersonal experience.
Narcissister, my art character, employs humor and spectacle to explore gender, racial identity, sexuality. Opening up and turning against themselves what Jamaican- born British Cultural Studies scholar Stuart Hall calls "fixed and closed stereotypical representations," I expose, in sculpture, video, film, performance, and collage work, the practice of representation itself, challenging the audience to question its own enjoyment and titillation.
Narcissister Organ Player is a hybrid performance/documentary film that explores how ancestral data is stored in our bodies, impacting the lives we lead. On the personal level, the film investigates how my complex family history compelled me to create the masked, erotic performance character Narcissister.
The Face (Performing Male Facial Features), part of the collage studies, 2019
Narcissister Breast Work, 2019
Awarded the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary short at Outfest
In Fall 2019 I shot Narcissister Breast Work, a short film exploring the legality of bare- breastedness for women in the streets of New York City, a subject I have been invested in since 2014. Focusing on the exercise by women of their right to bare their breasts in public, this film is an investigation into how prohibitions on female toplessness are grounded in fear of, and desire to control, the female body. The film was selected to premiere at Sundance 2020 and screened at the Frameline Festival in San Francisco and Outfest in Los Angeles in Summer 2021. In December 2019, I was selected to be part of the ArtBasel Panel “Double Knowledge – the Legacy of Carolee Schneemann” in Miami.
To see more work, information, & press:
Excerpts of recent (2018-2021) in progress selected performance video works are below:
Legs
