Narcissister

Narcissister employs humor and spectacle to explore gender, racial identity, and sexuality. She wears stripper gear, pneumatic breasts, outlandish wigs, and trompe l’oeil costumes to deconstruct stereotypical representations. By opening up and turning against themselves what Jamaican-born British cultural theorist Stuart Hall calls "fixed and closed stereotypical representations,” she exposes, in live performance, video, film, sculpture, and collage, the practice of representation itself, and challenges the audience to question its own enjoyment and titillation. Through Narcissister, fetishism is questioned, particularly sexual fetishism, which is notorious in its fixing of racist and gendering stereotypes. Rather than abandon this contaminated site, Narcissister dives headlong into the muck, into the depths of the fantasy and fetish itself, to expose and deconstruct their power. Intervening in the exchange between the image and its psychic meaning uncovers the collective fantasies with which we invest these images, and forces representation open.