Tracey Rose


Tracey Rose
The Cockpit

MC is pleased to present the last exhibition at its Los Angeles location: Tracey Rose’s The Cockpit. In what could seem a fitting gesture for the occasion, Tracey Rose has come round to killing God in this latest video work. A theatrical piece commissioned by the South African Broadcasting Corporation, The Cockpit is a world of murder and revenge populated by stylized characters like the jester, the soldier boy, Space Man, Lil Bo Beep, the wise Redd Indian and the adorably clueless Jesus Potter Heart. A series of personage photographic portraits accompany the video. Together they form a patchwork of cultural references plaguing national, religious and cultural consciousness, pounding out the absurdities and general mismanagement of institutionalized cultural discourse. Although Rose is not her customary every performer this time, she is nonetheless omnipresent in the direction, script and in an improvised moment when the characters on their way to killing God leisurely and explicitly gossip about the artist’s sexual exploits.

MC will also be showing a renewed version of The Cunt Show, in which the artist, dressed as Mami, a head teacher character, speaks a vitriolic response to institutional feminism through the voices of two sock puppets. This video performance recreates a talk given by the artist during Global Feminism, an exhibition at the Brooklyn Art Museum (of which the institutional logo is recognizable in the background throughout the performance). In this version, Rose gives Mami a video audience in the form of a silent, black and white projection of 17 audience members. Silent and slow, seemingly in a dark cave, the audience hangs among the viewers, and looks for the shadows of knowledge that Mami projects. In a series of photographs complementing the video, some of these characters from the crowd are portrayed in a style that recalls the old movie bills of time past.

Tracey Rose has widely exhibited in Africa, Europe and the US. Her work was recently seen in “El mirall sud-africà” at the Centre De Cultura Contemporània De Barcelona, Spain, “Mouth Open, Teeth Showing: Major Works from the True Collection” at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, “Memories of Modernity” in Malmo, Sweden, “Check List: Luanda Pop” at the African Pavilion in the 52nd Venice Biennale, Italy, “Heterotopias” at the Thessaloniki Biennale in Greece, and “Global Feminisms” at The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art in Brooklyn, New York (all 2007). Caryatid & BinneKant Die Wit Does and Imperfect Performance: A tale in Two States are among her most recent live performances, seen at the Dusseldorf Art Fair in Germany, and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, respectively.

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