Artist Fucks the Man

by Art Fag City on March 27, 2009 Blurb

Art Fag City, Justine Lai, painting, presidents
Image via the Justine Lai website. Screengrab AFC

Justine Lai screws a large number of dead presidents to “subvert authority”.   We wish the artist all the luck in the world with her project, and particularly look forward to seeing a few of living presidents depicted.  In fact, we suggest Lai consider using the White House contact form to alert Barack Obama to her project.  He’ll want to see his portrait.

Artist statement below:

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.

March 2009

Via: ss (metafilter)

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