The Incentive Performances
The Hot New Investment
Photographs of performance2018
For a period of time, my studio was at American Steel, a multi-warehouse complex known for its ambitious and thriving artist community. The collective of artists used to host regular exhibitions. But in 2018, the building was sold to real estate developers looking to gentrify the area, and they slowly expelled artists from the space through arbitrary excuses. As a final hurrah, a handful of artists held one last show in the warehouse amongst the rubble produced by the new owners deconstructing the studios. I contributed to the farewell through a performance where I lit wax-coated dollar bills as if I were saying a prayer to votive candles. A trumpeter played slow somber music that wafted through the emptied space and the mournful experience commemorated yet another artist space lost to the ambition of wealth.
Photography credit: Myles Lawrence Briggs
Supplemental Incentives
Film of performance2017
The film captures a reenactment of a happening I originally performed live at the Stork Club, a live music and performance venue located in downtown Oakland. The performance is a satirical critique of late-stage capitalism, with the artist eating carrots delivered by the invisible hand of the market, as opposed to sticks, first with enthusiasm and later exhaustion. The sound of coins dropping in the background reinforces the metaphor that while money can be a strong incentive, it can also become unsatisfying in excess.
Carrots & Sticks
Photographs of performance2022
In this performance at Wonderland Bar in Brooklyn, NY I absurdly and dramatically ate carrots and slapped sticks on the stage floors and walls while wearing a statue of liberty freedom crown.
Photography credit: Evelina Nolin
Split Gaze
Photographs of participatory performance2018
The documentation is from a participatory performance where I invited male passersby to paint for me using their genitalia. I did this in rebellion to Yves Klein who used female bodies to apply paint with a blue color he “owned” through a patent. By persuading men into painting for me instead, I was aiming to take back ownership of using bodies to create paintings.
In this iteration, I was particularly curious to explore how different genders experienced the event so I had two photographers, one male, and one female, capture the performance. I gave each photographer the same instructions but received distinctly varied imagery, physical evidence to the difference in their gaze and experience of the intimate painting process. My audience is gendered, and I attempted through documentation to capture their divergent experiences.
Female Gaze
Photography credit: Ngoc Ho
Male Gaze
Photography credit: Michael Rubin
