Peaches at Kunstverein Hamburg

Artist: Peaches

Exhibition title: Whose Jizz Is This?

Venue: Kunstverein Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

Date: August 10 – October 20, 2019

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist, Kunstverein Hamburg

Note: Exhibition booklet can be found here

Kunstverein in Hamburg presents the first institutional solo exhibition of the musician and artist Peaches. On the twentieth anniversary of her stage debut, Peaches takes a trans-disciplinary and transgressive approach, expanding the format of “the exhibition” by creating a living organism. Working at the intersection of performance and visual art, she develops new and surprising artistic forms. The exhibition presents an amplified way of looking at and understanding Peaches‘ universe and the critical thought that informs her work.

Peaches has always been interested in the empowerment of the body. At the heart of this presentation are the “Fleshies”, who have renamed themselves as such to rewrite their narrative. The double masturbator, silicone sex aid, reduces the body to holes in a passive state. Rejecting this, the Fleshies discard words like sex toys and Masturbators to break away from humans and human interactions in a quest to find sexual equality amongst themselves. As they work to become a satisfied, self sufficient community, Fleshies decentralise a destructive and narcissistic human world and start a revolution.

In a theatrical and humorous way, Peaches gives shape to an intersectional feminist perspective. Ever adept at boundary blurring, she has produced a site specific work with unexpected approaches and historical reflections on sex, queerness and new millennial politics. Whose Jizz Is This? is a “deconstructed musical.” Peaches takes her many-sided practices—music production, live performance, performance art, video, theatrical direction, set and light design— to new heights by combining them with new found mediums including sculpture, textiles manipulation, and animatronics.

Whose Jizz Is This? is an immersive installation in 14 Scenes. Here, Scenes are the language and strategy of theater and live performance practiced in a gallery context. Using directorial concepts and story telling, the struggles and triumphs of the Fleshies emerge. Peaches uses Set Design as a way to explore the “stage” without the performer, reinterpret its purpose and present its architecture in unique and challenging ways. Staged Banners are derived from her live tour experiences. They are a duet of promotional print and stage riser creating a new kind of frame. She casts animatronics, fountains and latex Sculpture in leading roles as live performers. A three dimensional “album”, Soundscape, narrates the Scenes and a composition of light, Lightscape, modulates emotion through the syncopation of color and rhythm. Video is used to create new fantasies and intimate realities asking the viewer to become passive to the passion of the emancipated Fleshie. A series of Acoustic Tapestries explore privacy, ceremonial spaces, and transformation. They are inspired by stage curtains and studio isolation materials.

Moving through the exhibition, we experience the Fleshies’ highs and lows. We meet them in the Glory Hall, at the Peep Show, at an AA meeting, at the altar where they sing songs of survival and at the commemorative fountain, where they reverse the notion of being jizzed into and ask the question, Whose Jizz Is This?

For the show’s opening, Federica Dauri will do a durational performance existing as a silicone form in collaboration with Hermes Pittakos.

This project is a coproduction of the Kunstverein in Hamburg with Internationales Sommerfestival Kampnagel and is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, German Federal Cultural Foundation, Embassy of Canada and Canada Council of the Arts.

Peaches, Whose Jizz Is This?, installation view, Kunstverein in Hamburg, 2019, Photo: Fred Dott