A compelling survey of the L.A. performance artist who riled up Jesse Helms in the 1990s culture war opens at ICA LA
The word queer went mainstream about 20 years ago. Its hostile, “Lord of the Flies” connotation of social pariah was shed to become a self-affirming term adopted by sexual and gender minorities who are not heterosexual or cisgender.
At the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, “Queer Communion” opens with performance documentation that includes video in which a shirtless young man wielding a large knife engages in ritual cutting of his own flesh. The visible scars that crisscross his body amid fresh new tracings of blood confirm that this is not the first time that self-harm has been undertaken.The bladework is difficult to watch. For Athey’s art, that difficulty is a virtue, not a vice.
Doing so forces open an otherwise clenched acceptance of seemingly undemanding norms. One might think that sacramental bread and wine are merely metaphors, but the religion’s adherents believed from the earliest centuries in their miraculous transformation into actual body and blood to be ingested. Being gay did not fit that hyperreligious program, except insofar as the artist embraced the faith’s extravagantly theatrical commitments. One fringe performance activity fed into another as he matured and began to embrace the new performance art genre.
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