JUSTINE LAI is a painter that currently lives in Oakland. Provocative paintings of herself in bed with historical US Presidents. I really didn't know how to react at first, I enjoy her technique but I just couldn't understand the approach. I dug a bit deeper and the explanations behind her works:
In Join Or Die, I paint myself having sex with the Presidents of the United States in chronological order. I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents. A power lies in rendering these patriarchal figures the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire, but it is a power that is constantly negotiated.
I approach the spectacle of sex and politics with a certain playfulness. It would be easy to let the images slide into territory that's strictly pornographic—the lurid and hardcore, the predictably "controversial." One could also imagine a series preoccupied with wearing its "Fuck the Man" symbolism on its sleeve. But I wish to move beyond these things and make something playful and tender and maybe a little ambiguous, but exuberantly so. This, I feel, is the most humanizing act I can do.
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On a more serious note, THINGS I did last night.
Thanks for the laugh Bobby over at Kitsun Noir.
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If your hungry and in Portland check out BELLY TIMBER. Seriously good restaurant in a house operation on Hawthorne. Half size entree choices are amazingly rare when dining fine. Service was beyond informed and friendly. Check it out.
Take Care.
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