Emily Oliveira “Dick Van Dick: Everything Louder Than Everything Else”
Soho20 Chelsea Gallery
[Image: The Tower: Danger, Crisis, Sudden Change, Destruction, Higher Learning, and Liberation, 2018]
This event has ended.
Dick Van Dick: Everything Louder Than Everything Else is an exhibition of the costumes, furniture, and personal items of Oliveira’s drag king persona, Dick Van Dick. Dick is an outlandish, Latino Liberace and extra-dimensional being. By using the aesthetics and curatorial language of celebrity-home museums, the installation deals with the pseudo-spiritual enshrinement of performers in American culture: pilgrimages to Graceland and Paisley Park replace those to Lourdes and Bethlehem. Dick’s costumes blur, expand, and confuse the borders and materiality of his body. His furnishings are a high-low whiplash, and his personal items offer a glimpse into a complex personal narrative. The cheeky allusions to his alien-ness call to mind the ways in which a society that profits from the inventiveness of queer culture erases the queerness of artists. One of Dick’s heavily sequined suits will be on display, along with outlandishly embellished decor “modeled after the designs in his Palm Springs Mansion.” Souvenir candles in the shape of Dick’s head will be on sale.
This project was one of three chosen through a competitive open call with an outside jury.
Media
Schedule
from October 12, 2018 to November 10, 2018
Opening Reception on 2018-10-12 from 18:00 to 21:00