My review of Young Jean Lee’s Untitled Feminist Show out now in the February issue of The Brooklyn Rail.
For a further discussion (that is both riveting and frustrating) around this show :
My review of Young Jean Lee’s Untitled Feminist Show out now in the February issue of The Brooklyn Rail.
For a further discussion (that is both riveting and frustrating) around this show :
First there’s adolescence. Languid and cruel
complexity. A culmination of tiny incidents.
The yellow jack-in-the-box—coil?
The orange plastic fence—picket?
Birthday dresses hide and expose girlishness.
Partnering up explores full bodily queerness.
It’s ‘wild.’ Despite all the severe angles. Androgynous
sweeping in green glow. Emphasize the cruelty of sorts.
Flop like mechanical fish out of water.
But for knees like padded feet.
One may peer over the narrative curve.
Or one may curve over the narrative drawl.
Plastic grass plucked from braid and thrown like
traditional darts. You can learn a lot of things from
the flowers. You can collapse a coil and become joyously
creepy. Spastic tick kicks
the box. Relationships scatter marbles. Not nearly tangled
enough. Movement maunders in an attempt to control
a possessed hand. When moving props to no end.
The crumbling face sways. Why don’t you listen to wild
circus music with one finger raised?
Why don’t you roll like a yellow car rolls up a leg?
The mechanics of play douse a secret in no time.
The body hardens then unravels in compressed states.
Bite the fence and jump. Early attraction constructs
the dipping landscape. Volunteers the sun in your eye.
**This poem was first published in the October 2011 issue of The Brooklyn Rail. Special thanks to Claudia La Rocco.
