Photo credit: Shelley Holcomb
The excerpt below is taken from a text written by Shelley Holcomb of Curate.LA
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…My first experience with Kim’s work was witnessing “Art Scene”, a collaborative performance she did with Christine Wang at an artist-run space in DTLA. The piece presented a satirical window into the art industry by showcasing the relationship between a gallerist (Christine) and an artist (Kim). The concept behind this performance was seemingly normal, but it was the dynamic between the two roles that took this piece to a new level. Their interaction was portrayed as a Sub/Dom situation where the artist took on the role of the Submissive and the gallerist was the Dominatrix known as “Mistress Lucy”. The “session” starts with the gallerist belittling the artist’s educational background, attaching paintbrushes to the artist’s hand with duct tape, and demanding that the artist do free install work in order to have her artwork considered. All the while, the artist obeys each demand and continues to beg to be shown: “I would put my work into saddlebags, put the saddlebags on my own back, and I would crawl hands and knees to your beautiful gallery”. Throughout the performance, the artist is continually humiliated and depreciated. She is given a spanking for every square foot of space her old, unsold artwork occupies in storage, forced to eat ramen out of a bowl on the floor while barking like a dog, coerced into giving up 100% of sales and all artistic integrity, and in the end the artist quite literally gets fucked by the gallerist. As an artist myself, I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity, yet familiarity of the whole situation…
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