Retail Therapy (2022)

Inspired by Man Ray’s “Obstruction,” I created a dress made of translucent plastic hangers found in my childhood home. In performances of this work, titled Retail Therapy, I quickly constructed the sculpture and hung up clothing donated by audience members in the span of 15 - 20 minutes. I wrote an accompanying text reflecting on my family’s relationship to happiness and consumer culture. A recording of me reading this piece played throughout the theater/venue.

In this performance, which was shown at The Tank and JACK, I tried to challenge the capitalist desire to accumulate goods and ask one question: “why is it that we collect so many ‘things?’”.

During my presentation of Retail Therapy in JACK’s 2022 Radical Acts Festival, I invited audience members to participate in the performance. Audience members had the opportunity to complete a questionnaire before the start of the performance that challenged them to reflect more deeply on the material history of their possessions. Following the performance, audience members could read the custom tags I created for each garment to learn more about it and who once wore it. Finally, audiences had the opportunity to “shop” and take any part of the hanging sculpture I had created home with them in brown paper shopping bags.

These were the responses I received from audience members at JACK on November 10th, 2022.

[The Tank performance documentation above is by evan ray suzuki and JACK performance documentation below is by Jasiel Lampkin]