dreamgurl (2023)

April 22 – May 21, 2023 at A.I.R. Gallery

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 22, from 6–8pm

Gallery performances: Saturday, April 29, and Sunday, April 30, from 2–6pm RSVP here

View the press release here.

dreamgurl features a series of self-portraits that explore the production and reproduction of sexually explicit images.

I was inspired to begin this series after a video of my 2020 performance “La Négresse blanche,” which includes nudity, was downloaded by an anonymous Vimeo user named “J” and shared on various pornographic sites without my consent in February 2021.

Although I had originally intended “La Négresse blanche” to be a commentary on double consciousness, internalized racism, and the epidermalization of whiteness, J had classified the work as masturbatory material and ironically distributed it as PAWG (phat ass white girl) porn. Notably, J exoticizes my naked Black body by repeatedly drawing attention to my “dark and meaty cunt,” nipples, and “kitty.” Despite my numerous attempts to regain control of the video, it continues to pop up on different sites every few months to this day.

After processing this violation, I felt that I needed to reckon with the fact that my art can be classified as pornographic because it centers my naked body. Rather than disavow this designation, I use this latest series as an opportunity to explore the possibility of being a producer of pornographic images.

I started collecting dozens of vintage 1980s Playboy magazines to study the physical language and gestures displayed in archetypal pornographic materials. Cutting out the bodies of white (and often highly bronzed and airbrushed) centerfold models, I embarked on a mission to entirely cover my body in an assemblage of thousands of magazine clippings. dreamgurl documents my construction of garish Frankenstein-esque molds of my body, an act that took place over twenty hours in the privacy of a studio. The messy performance incorporated honey, Q-tips, saliva, sweat, hair, and dirt.

I used the photographs and videos from my durational performance to produce self-portraits of my face, chest, stomach, pubic area, thighs, and ass. The exhibition also includes a single remnant of the performance: one of the masks that was adhered to my face. It sits in the gallery on a mirrored vanity table in front of a magnified scan of the object, becoming a metonym for the slippery, sinuous relationship between image and performance.

In dreamgurl, I offer up abstracted flesh for consumption. I invite audiences to be unashamed about their voyeurism as they move through the gallery and delight in eyeing (and occasionally fingering or trying on) the collaged pieces. Yet, in this project of exposure, I reveal myself on my own terms. Subverting general assumptions of the “nude selfie” by cloaking myself in images of others, I largely keep my own body hidden.