Drake, LACMA, SXSW & Me: Join!

While I was in L.A in July (late June? Jesus, time flies) shooting some projects, I happened to make friends with the amazing team at LACMA and they took Tayler & I on a tour of the place through their eyes. We spent a few hours eating healthy pizza -- L.A is absurd -- crying internally over our favorite impressionists, and posing with the art for truly epic Snapchat opportunities. We topped of the visit with a trip to the James Turrell Retrospective and got to take selfies in it, too.

I loved visiting LACMA especially when guided by such a chill team who recognized that my generation -- our generation -- view art as interaction opportunities for exploration and identification. Art is lived, y'all. And the technologies we use to view it -- and share it -- change the meaning and intent of an artist's creation.  ("Suddenly the Koons is me....") I love how LACMA uses Snapchat and Twitter to connect with visitors and I wish more museums and art spaces would take lessons from them. We talk about art all the time... but when it talks back, things get really interesting. 

So it is with great pleasure that I can say that I'm supporting LACMA in their mission to get to SXSW to host a panel about the future of art museums and tech! They want to bring a presentation and panel to SXSW 2015 that questions how museums harness tech to bring a better experience, and how we can make young guns passionate art creators, viewers, buyers, and experiencers. 

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I do believe that this panel would be super dope -- please join me (and Drake, evidently) in supporting LACMA and their journey to revamp the art+tech marriage and vote for their Interactive Panel for SXSW15! Voting closes September 5th. Thanks babes. 

Most Important Ugly: Opening Reception

Thank you everyone for coming out! So many people have emailed bummed they couldn't make it / wondering if it will be a moving exhibition. We haven't thought about taking it elsewhere yet (cart before horse) but it'll be at American Two Shot for 3 months, about, so those who couldn't swing it have time to visit. To those who did come by -- I love you very much. Thank you for sharing the night with me.

Here are all the photos from the opening that Tink took for us. They're also on Facebook. If you took any at the show please tag it with #mostimportantugly on twitter/tumblr/instagram so we can check it out! We would love to see them.



Tayler & I with our headlining muse Indigo, who came in her full lady vengeance makeup (I love this picture she took of herself).



It is nigh impossible to get all my favorite people in the same room together but this picture is proof it is possible!!!



Shot before the store got way crowded (but in a good way).


The Rookie crew came out also, and Shinji, and so many other people who are bright stars in my universe. I love you all very much.

Thanks to Paper Magazine for the shoutout on the show also -- ugliest art opening of the week, indeed.

Honestly I feel like a broken record saying thank you over and over again but I really am just so grateful. I'll talk more in depth about the show itself and the process that went into it at a later time. For now? I've got a lot of homework to do.

hope springs eternal

"Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you." (x)

Nan Goldin, Amanda in the Mirror (1992)

Lingerie Sunday: Mimi Smith

For this week I thought I'd highlight a really cool artist I've actually been reading about in class. Mimi Smith! Frieze Magazine has a good bio on her work.

Mimi Smith. Timelines Installation (Shoes, Underpants, Undershirts), 1999–2005. Source

Smith was part of the Feminist Art Movement which began in earnest in the 1970's. Most of my favorite artists emerged from that period, Smith is a new favorite but definitely a big one because all of her work deals with the relationship between identity of Women v.s what they wear. It's all very snarky and deals with the cult of domesticity and capitalism and public/private and all these feminist catchphrases and Big Things to Care About. I could wax on and on about these things, but I'm not up for writing an essay. This is just me (hopefully eloquently) fangirling an artist I admire. Anyway.

Mimi Smith. Steel Wool Peignoir, 1966–1966. Source.

I'm very amused by this steel wool peignoir- peignoirs are like old school lingerie nightgown bathrobe situations, you know, like the ones Golden Era movie stars wear-. This is rad because it looks absolutely beautiful and luxurious but it's made of steel wool. It's so snarky and a nice commentary on the reality of domestic labor and the expectations surrounding women.

 Besides that piece though, she did a series called Protectors Against Illness, which is the main reason I'm obsessed with her. In the 1990's, Smith had breast cancer and did this series. The reason why I'm highlighting her on Lingerie Sunday is because of her "Tamoxifan Bra". Tamoxifan is the medication given to women who have had breast cancer; it is a remission drug. The bra is incredibly pretty, but what is unexpected is that it's decorated with Tamoxifan pills.

Protector Against Illness: Red Tamoxifen Bra, 1997, nylon, lace, tamoxifen pills, satin hanger, 16 x 15 inches. Source. Second image is a collection spanning 1993-197, fabrics, pills, vitamins, surgical masks, ribbon, lace, hangers.
Source.

 Long-time readers will know that I have health problems and I have what I call chronic sick people humor. I just like things that talk about pills in a smart and funny way that isn't your average "blah we're all on drugs fuck medication it's capitalists way of enslaving the citizens!!11" discourse. For me, medication is a daily and important part of my life and Mimi's way of combining 'chronic sick people humor' with clothing and material identity really hits close to home for me. I like the discussion she opens up about illness, and protection, and luxury and necessity through pretty frilly things like underwear. I relate to it. It complicates things you might not ordinarily think about.

Protector Against Illness: Black Tamoxifen Bra, 1996, nylon, lace, tamoxifen pills, acrylic paint, satin hanger, 16 x 15 inches. Source.

This edition of LS doesn't really deal with purchasable lingerie which I think people were expecting, but I'm not one to care about other people's expectations. Like I said in my last LS post -- lingerie is as much a method of self care to me as it is a category of clothing. I admire what Mimi did in response to her cancer -- when life hands you some deep shit, you make the most of it. And she did! And it's beautiful. 

Illustrations by Upsana Prasad

I have a pretty low key desk job at school (which is great, because I get to do homework while also researching fashion and feminist stuff while also writing up things for Rookie while also doing things for powderdoom!) and on my surfing in between helping patrons, I stumbled across the work of Upsana Prasad, a London College of Fashion BA student in Womenswear. I was really into Upsana's illustrations, they're reminiscent of Rorschach tests and I'm preoccupied by things related to mental illness at the moment (you'll see health/fashion/feminst themes a lot in my future posts here, I'm just saying).

For more on Upsana and these illustrations, follow the jump.

some notes on napkins.

Visionaire / Comme des Garcons via  rifles @ tumblr

“…the female narcissist is dangerous to patriarchy because she obviates the desiring male subject (loving herself, she needs no confirmation of her desirability from him). in the case of an artistic practice that performs female narcissism (such as wilke’s), the threat lies in its making superfluous the arbiters of artistic value. already presuming her desirability, wilke obviates the modernist critical system; loving herself, she needs no confirmation of her artistic “value.” 

—	amelia jones, body art: performing the subject

“Those who subvert social norms are, ostensibly, people who have forgotten that they can be seen, publicly, at any time. Therefore, when they transgress social norms—by expressing physical affection for a person not visibly coded as the opposite sex, for example, or by being fat and rejecting social and bodily invisibility—they need to be reminded of this omniscient social gaze, and in the absence of institutional discipline, must be punished so they do not transgress again. This is the mechanism by which a dude who sees me in a vividly-colored dress, walking alone as though I either don’t know or don’t care that I am defying bodily norms, feels compelled to scream “UGLY FAT BITCH” at me. He is applying social discipline and teaching me a lesson: Everyone can see you, and your body and/or behavior are unacceptable.”

—	So Michel Foucault and Jeremy Bentham walk into an elementary school cafeteria*

Cindy Sherman Untitled #479, 1975

I have been very very happy lately, friends and parties and Beyonce do that to a person. That doesn't mean I haven't been thinking critically though... and thinking critically makes me feel sad in kind of a detached way. I wrote this the other night on my tumblr, and I collected all of these things on Tumblr too, but I need the conciseness of a blog post with all of them together to understand what I want from art / critique / myself. Anyway, here goes.

I want ridiculousness in fashion. I want ugly. I want destruction, I want imperfection, flaws, ripped seams, extra armholes, mutated glory that when people walk by me they whisper that they just don’t get it. I want to confuse you. I don’t want timelessness. I want everything, right here, right now, no regard for looking regal or rich or calm and collected. Why do I have to be classy anyway? Why do I need to impress you? When I slip on something I love I’m not doing it for you, I am doing it to feel good about myself, I am doing it to be transported into a place in my mind where I am safe and powerful and the cracks in my existence are filled with gold and diamonds and chocolate and goodness. I want to be able to change what I’m wearing mid walk — flip my jacket inside out, upside down, endless options, I want to tear apart what I’m wearing and what I represent and build back up again. I want you to have to think about what I represent, the space I take up. I want you running scared because you don’t understand and I don’t want you to. Every fucking seam of my jacket represents something you can’t have because I don’t want you to. 

This is mine. 

All mine.

 You can’t have it. 

VARDØGER

['ʋɑːɾdøːgəɾ]: is a spirit predecessor, from Norwegian folklore. Stories typically include instances that are nearly déjà vu in substance, but in reverse, where a spirit with the subject's footsteps, voice, scent, or appearance and overall demeanor precedes them in a location or activity, resulting in witnesses believing they've seen or heard the actual person, before the person physically arrives.

Based on/ varroa mites/deformed wing virus & sacbrood virus/

mending/ biomorphism/ unconscious memories/

Chiharu Shiota & Lee Buls installations has also inspired & intrigued me to discover and approach

the possibilities of connections towards nature and the human form, in a way of uncertain perception.

Shot in LA before I transplanted to London. Following the film, lookbook photos will be posted shortly.

things i am obsessed with: odani motohiko

This is a guest post by my bff Scott Park.

Source

I’ve discovered Odani’s work accidentally I can’t remember where or when but ever since I did I’m continuously intrigued by his aesthetic and use of material. I was fortunate enough to see his work and also Chiharu Shiota’s installation at the “Bye Bye Kitty!!!” exhibition during my stay in NYC. Odani’s work resembles organic biomorphic forms, and possibly the idea of transformation. His visual presentation seems to be in a state of purity almost as if scientific in nature. I’m obsessed with how
his pieces evoke a feeling of being uncomfortable but to the point in which after a few moments of inspection, you forget you’re in a bare sterile white room, and in some ways sense something so natural.

The idea of Mending, Renovation, and Transformation are all that I’m interested in at the moment. And in some instances I had a personal connection to how poetic in substance Odani’s and a few other artists are now impacting me and my own work, especially since I tend to incorporate a similar notion of psychosis. I believe to question reason, sense, and experience can alter someone’s comprehensive thinking. But perhaps if this is what the future may look like, it’s a good sign.

♥

things i am obsessed with: chiharu shiota

・・・　　at Kenji Taki Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2009

This week, I figured I'd do something new; there's going to a post every day (including guest posts by my BFF Scott) because I want to show you guys stuff other than outfit posts and my angst-essays. A few days ago, Scott and I were on the phone last night discussing what's going on in the art world right now and how it's the only thing that is really inspiring us at the moment: fashion is on the sidelines, neither of us have really been impressed by shows or streetstyle lately and so we've turned to art. We've been obsessing over the art stuff Hussein Chalayan does when he's not doing fashion collections, and some really cool people I think you'll all like too. 

Home of Memory. Solo Show La Maison Rouge (Paris) France (2011)

Most of the time I'm not impressed with the modern artists I come across at Museums; I feel like most are stuck in this referential circle jerk where their work is just a platitude to older, more well known artists and I'm just grossed out by it right now. Like I said in my last post, everything feels like a copy of a copy of a copy and I want to claw my eyes out. Chiharu Shiota is one of the artists that makes me feel optimistic about what is going on in the art world and fashion scene. My favorite artists right now are all (and I don't think coincidentally) japanese post-war artists who've been on the scene for awhile and are off in their own dark world and drag you into it. It's very clinical, sometimes repetitive, but it never feels old. Chiharu is the perfect example; she's been doing the same method for almost two decades but always in different ways. It's very haunting and reminds me of the horror mangaka Junji Ito's work a little bit.  Speaking of which, I'm feeling in the mood to be terrified, so I'm gonna go back to watching City Hunter now (BEST DRAMA SINCE COFFEE PRINCE?).

Installation at Haunch of Venison 2010　　Haunch of Venison　 (London) U.K.

In Silence. Solo Show Detached - Tasmania Museum & Art Gallery Cooperation with Museum of Old and New Art, Curator: Olivier Varenne (Tasmania) Australia 2011

insanity is like space.

I TRY TO MAKE THINGS IN AN ENVIRONMENT

OF

CONTROLLED LUNACY

don't be calm jump first ask questions later

something good comes from kinda being out of control

don't be so hard on yourself mistakes are good-i think they help use to see

it's so beautiful to see someone who has made something and didn't quite know what they were doing but did it anyway-when you can really see the fire was under their feet and they had to make it or else

I've been losing inspiration. So, I've decided I am going to close my eyes and pick up something at random in my room. I will spin around twice, walk two paces and do the same, and then reverse, and then do the same. Repeat until satisfactorily layered. I will do this until I want to bash my head in, and so find inspiration again.



*The very awesome words of Mr. Danny Mansmith. I came across him while looking up (what else?) Comme Des Garcons. I dig his work. I wish I had one of his brooches or necklaces or whatever. He had a necklace in his etsy store that was so epic. So. Epic.

from art to A R T

I don't know their names, but I love them.