GOODGIRL : 2017
GOODGIRL was a solo exhibition during which I lived in the Commons Gallery as a character I had named GOODGIRL. During those three weeks, I ate only pink food, listened to music that I categorized as “pink,” and watched magical girl anime. All of the furniture was either made by me or found on the side of the road in my neighborhood, Makiki, and painted “pepto pink.” I spent a year collecting pink trash, and as my efforts became known by the Honolulu art community, pink objects would show up at my studio door.
2017
Following the election of Donald J Trump to the US Presidency, being on “an island in the middle of the Pacific” was strange. Isolating. I was experiencing this grief and shock alongside what I perceived to be “crossing the threshold of youth.” At the age of 25, I was too old to be a “girl” but too young to be anything else. Unable to make any work that my graduate committee seemed to like, I decided that I needed space to work through the rotting image of myself as a “good girl.” I was given three weeks to perform this death ritual at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Commons Gallery.
Suburban Rot
GOODGIRL lived in a suburban house with a perfectly manicured synthetic astroturf lawn. Even the vinyl siding to her house was fake, painted on. The scent of the gallery was equally unnatural, a nauseating sugary watermelon strawberry created by room sprays and candles.
The suburban house was a reference to my own upbringing as a child growing up in Folsom, California, and then Carmel, Indiana. A fabrication all it’s own, the suburbs are insulation from the poverty and crime perceived to exist in both rural and urban environments. There is no other place GOODGIRL could be from. She was a GOOD GIRL.
During her time in the gallery, GOODGIRL operated a livestream and maintained a social media presence. She could be perceived at all times, and at all times she had to be GOOD. The act of durational performance, a type of performance that’s “over when it’s over and not a moment before,” is immersive for the performer and a testament to their endurance. GOODGIRL never really stopped performing her GIRLness for the entirety of the show which led to illness and injury. During this time I suffering gastrointestinal damage from ingesting only synthetic pink food, chemical burns on my face and body from “makeup tutorials,” Insomnia/Fatigue from longterm performing and psychological aversions to the color pink.
To Be Looked At Looking
Due to the violent and sometimes sexual nature of GOODGIRLness, viewers of GOODGIRL were placed in the role of The Voyeur. They did not enjoy playing this role and anytime GOODGIRL looked back, or they caught their shadowy figures in mirrors or camera lenses, viewers (voyeurs) recoiled.
To be caught looking. To be looked at looking. To be looked at. To be watched watching.
Social Media
What is something you could tell a stranger on the internet but you could never tell your friend or your lover?
During the course of GOODGIRL, I performed both on the gallery and online. As a member of the first Facebook Generation, I grew up almost entirely online in online message boards like Gaia Online or on intimate blogs like LiveJournal or Tumblr. The 2012-2016 Tumblr Girl was my image of peak femininity and desirability in my early 20s. To this day, I still suffer from the indoctrination of aestheticized domestic violence and eating disorders.
GOODGIRL told all of her secrets online. Her mental illness multiplied under camera lenses as she was watched and rewatched, blogged and reblogged, and viewed herself more and more within the context of her inner inner inner inner inner inner life.
Death Ritual
The GOODGIRL performance was always intended to be a ritual to some kind of end, though I was not sure what that end would be. I know I wanted to move beyond her in some way, figure something out, organize something in my mind, but the way my studio practice has always operated is that the meaning comes through and after the making.
I told people that GOODGIRL died. That she suffocated. That her heart stopped. That she withered away like an ascetic. That she ascended. That she shat herself to death. That all her limbs fell off like a dying hermit crab until she was just a hot pair of legs.
But I think she just changed into a GOODWOMAN, a GOODLAY, a GOODWIFE, a GOODAMERICAN, a GOODALLY, and a GOODMOTHER.
