ABLA: In the Dungeon of Kim Ye

artblitz-01Photo credit: Lara Salmon

The excerpt below is taken from a text written by Lara Salmon of ArtblitzLA.com
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Naked except for a hood over my head, I crawl across the floor. Spiked fingernails run down my exposed back and a hand slaps my ass. “Sit,” she commands and I obey. “Are you thirsty?” Yesss. She peels back the hood so that I can see her figure tower over me as she drinks from a water bottle. Her dark purple lips dribble the water onto my mouth. I choke instead of swallow. Her light laughter fills the dungeon as my cheeks heat up with embarrassment.

I am here for an exchange with professional dominatrix and artist Kim Ye. We have agreed that I will trade a piece of my art for this experience of being dominated in her dungeon. The exchange is part of a larger project Kim calls Shared Value in which she invites artists to trade their work for sessions of fantasy fulfillment with her. As a performance artist, I trade Kim the video and relics of a performance I call ‘Vaginapop for Kim Ye.’ I leave her dungeon covered in candle wax droplets and exuberant about my acquisition of a professional dominatrix session.

Kim is an artist whose provocative performances, sensual videos, and latex sculptures have intrigued me since I became familiar with her work in 2014. The eroticism in her art, she tells me, is often inspired from her job as a professional dominatrix. While her art may come off as extreme, Kim hopes to put eroticism in normative terms and show that BDSM can be ordinary…

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