Cerritos College Press Release Here and below
They Perished By The Wicked … For Being True And The Fairest Of All …
In the EXTERIOR WINDOW VITRINE
February 6, 2023 – March 10, 2023
Artist Talk: Monday, February 6, 2023 @ 6PM
Reception: Monday, February 6, 2023 @ 7-9PM
The Cerritos College Art Gallery is pleased to present Snow White and the Seven Deadly Sins, a special Window Dressing installation by the Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist Jynx Prado.
Deploying ample doses of humor and irony, Prado’s work seeks to intervene into the circuits of familiar iconography in order to better describe their lived environment and convey the nuances of their social life as a queer, nonbinary Mexi-Salvi American. Their practice ranges from paintings to sculptures to performances to installations, generally using burlap fabric as their unifying material. A loosely spun fiber with a rough texture and uncommonly resilient strength, burlap is fabricated material derived from the ordinary jute plant (corchorus olitorius), a safe and sustainable natural crop. Prado uses this material ambiguity, between the natural and the artificial, as a broader metaphor for the cycles of life and death present in their life and work. Once a living jute plant, in death it becomes a natural fiber that is artificial woven into a burlap pattern and then sewn together to become the embodiment of a new life, the vessel for a shared experience.
This literal and metaphorical trans-formation is most prevalent in Prado’s Embodiments series, which consist of various fibrous bodies (humanoid, animalistic, and/or abstracted forms) each singularly and collectively operating as surrogates for the experience of a queer, genderfluid individual. The primary persona, manifested throughout this series though varying in form and number over time, is a character Prado has dubbed Mx. Burlap, a multiplicious figure representing the indeterminacy of the trans and/or nonbinary experience through a never-static, ever-evolving configuration. Despite, or perhaps due to, the evasiveness of their identity, Mx. Burlap is described by Prado as “wearing a burlap sack on their head,” a vague allusion, it seems, to being held hostage and/or humbled and humiliated (i.e. sackcloth and ashes), at a time when the queer community is frequently villainized, and even criminalized, both globally and, even here, in the United States.
For their special Window Dressing installation in the Exterior Window Vitrine of the Cerritos College Art Gallery, Prado will debut Snow White and the Seven Deadly Sins: A Queery Tale, the first of a new series focused on re-presenting familiar fairy tales from a nonbinary perspective. Included in the installation are all three current Mx. Burlap forms from The Embodiments series, including one taking the place of the titular Snow White. Within the context of this queer retelling, Mx. Burlap (Snow White), laying prone on their coffin, becomes a proxy for the all-too-many victims of anti-LGBT violence today. Just as Snow White from the grim fairy tale is, at least temporarily, murdered by her wicked and jealous step-mother, the Queen, simply for being the true “fairest of them all,” trans and nonbinary people are, these days, habitually murdered just for the supposed ‘sin’ of being their true and fairest selves. As part of their ongoing installation, the artist will also randomly perform alongside their sculptures as a living and breathing embodiment, a fabulous Snow White finally awakened from their cursed slumber.
ARTIST NOTES:
Creating the Performance:
When I planned for the duration of the piece I thought at first that I could add different performance elements to get myself moving within the confined space as well as to avoid staying static. However looking back at different performances that I have done I realize that majority keep as a constant repetition with very minimal movement. If I decided to do several if not one huge constant cycle of acts during the piece then it would not really be consistent with previous works so I pondered on what to do. Looking into Snow White’s story the only thing noticeable that was repeated was just her stillness in the bed after eating the poisoned apple. For my Queery Tales Series one other Story that will be included in future works is Sleeping Beauty and I was going to do a sleeping portion so I didn’t want to do two of the same actions within the two. I decided on making Sleeping Beauty explore the dress making than the sleeping and tweaked the sleep into focusing into the paralysis of Snow White. In the Original Snow White story she was first poisoned by a comb, but that failed. Then by the apple that did not kill her but just paralyzed her unconscious once it was stuck in her throat, similar to a coma, until her prince kissed her that made her cough out the apple piece.
Looking back at performances I have studied there are various kinds of motionless endurance works: From EJ Hills Excellentia, Mollitia, Victoria, 2018 standing performance, James Luna’s Artifact Piece with a resting spread flat performance, Marina Abramovic’s The Artist is Present with her insane 716 hours and 30 minutes of sitting and observing the viewer performance and T.J. Dedeaux-Norris’s with their Eulogy Coffin performance all these artists had two things in common that made their motionless performances so unique with similar positions: Context variety and interaction with the Audience vary. For their audience Hill, Luna and Dedeaux-Norris all never acknowledge their audience while Abramovic’s relies on the interaction by attempting to connect with her observer. Luna and Dedeaux-Norris both lay down but Luna is in the context of representing himself as the bodies and sacred objects that colonial institutions have stolen from Native Americans while Dedeaux-Norris creates a funeral for their deceased artistic persona Tameka Jenean Norris that stems within their personal history and struggles coming up as a black nonbinary individual being put to rest as they start their life as Dedeaux-Norris.
All of the mentioned performance artists looked within their identity and within the context of where, what and when the work was made and they initiate their pieces with all that. Now When I gathered all this I didn’t want to recreate something that was already done nor did I want to explore a problem that was already observed. I read the entire original Snow White Story as well as looked at several iterations of this story and a lot of these stories were similar but were made in different eras of media as well as times in history. In the year 2023 the increase of anti trans and Nonbinary, Genderqueer laws in the United States have increased more than any other year, going over 400 as of early March, and the people within the communities affected have either been in conflict with law enforcement or by life-threatening situations that ended horribly. I looked at my timeline and Snow White and took notice of a connection: In the story the evil queen wants to be the fairest of all, but she is always stooped by Snow White so she ends up killing Snow White. Snow White really didn’t do anything other than being her true and fairest self and it hit me: What have trans and genderqueer people do to deserve the punishments we have been getting? I know for sure I have not done anything as a genderfluid person other than trying to live my life and being my true self. I fill in the context needed for the piece by representing myself as Snow White herself or in this case as themself as in the trans and genderqueer community as a whole. I would perform the piece by placing myself as Snow White to represent the communities being paralyzed by the evil queen of politics because we wee\re being our true selves and the queen felt threatened by it.
With the audience interaction I did not want to acknowledge them, but I did not want to be gone from their perspective by being asleep. Yes Snow White was asleep when she was paralyzed, but in the context of the story she was seen as dead, gone from existence. Trans and genderqueer communities are still here and always have been, but their freedoms and ability to move forward with their lives aren’t. In this case it is best to be paralyzed by being awake in the ‘Snow White Position’ while being in a giant window gallery AKA the worlds biggest glass bed case for the audience to have a separation from me but not far enough for them to not notice me. However for me to be paralyzed and motionless can also reference those who have passed away from anti trans and genderqueer violence; For me to be awake it could be for the souls that cannot rest in peace when our communities continue to be hunted down and politically attacked by the oppressors. The Glass separation of the gallery for myself and the audience is really like real life for trans and genderqueer people when those outside of the impact of anti-laws we face either react as they witness the impact by attempting to reach out or they are not phased for not being impacted by the politics. I suspected that once the performance starts the audience would either try to interact with me as I look up toward the ceiling or they glance and walk away. This was the case and more but that will be further explained in another portion of these notes.