Narcissister (2015 Creative Capital Awardee): Albert’s Paintings, Rachel’s Dress – Performance

Continuing her work with kinetic sculpture, Narcissister fills the gallery space with her latest chain-reaction machine and activates it with solo performance interventions. Embedded in the work are seascape paintings by Abraham “Albert” Benzaquen, the artist’s late uncle, an immigrant from Morocco, who sold his works on the Sheepshead Bay waterfront in Brooklyn.

Her performances in the gallery will stage a literal mechanical and physical chain reaction in tribute to the ways families and artists make and transmit meaning. In Narcissister’s presence, the thump and clang of the machine, paired with her silent, masked figure, interrupt and extend the undulating flow of Albert’s painted seas to create a newly punctuated sense of migratory memory. Still images acquire a rhythm; inherited objects become active participants in the telling of their own histories.

With legs spread and identity muted, Narcissister gives birth to the past. Her fleshly performance enters into tension with the quiet surface of Albert’s paintings, collapsing the distance between archival gathering and embodied memory. Albert’s Paintings, Rachel’s Dress leaves the gaps within family history unresolved, allowing what has been inherited to remain alive to transformation.