I ♥ Chabet : A Performance Tribute
curated by Donna Miranda & Angelo V. Suarez
The tribute as a genre in artistic praxis is equally performable, & the self-conscious deployment of the tropes of tribute can also function as a critique of tribute. It raises such questions as “Are filial connexions w/in professional contexts productive?”, “What constitutes filial connexions w/in artistic communities?”, “Can social relations between mentor & mentee outside of & w/in formal institutions be considered viable alternatives to other systems of pedagogy in art?”, “To what extent can the topography of influence be historiographically mapped out?”, “Do such influences have any bearing not only in the production of art but also in its consumption?”, etc.—questions aimed at dismantling, understanding, & ultimately reasserting the mystique that surrounds Chabet’s name, w/c now bears the force of what Lacan has termed ‘the name of the father.’
While I ♥ Chabet is not tied up w/ King Kong Art Projects’ Chabet: 50 Years string of exhibitions, I ♥ Chabet deliberately rides on this caravan of celebration as an unofficial satellite performance carried out by fans & for fans of Roberto Chabet, the fan being a subject-position that doesn’t necessarily participate in official discourse but holds agency precisely thru his/her proximity from the object of admiration or, if taken further, affection. But never love: the typographic icon of the ♥ maintains a critical distance from the object of affection [hence “I (heart) Chabet” & not “I love Chabet”], a distance necessary for the ontology of the fan to hold, for the fan to become visible. W/o this distance, the fan cannot express his/her affection, & it is this affection that constitutes fanhood.
In light of the above, this enterprise-project I ♥ Chabet is meant to be at once a tribute to Chabet & a critique of the reception—& anxiety—of his influence by way of that most ubiquitous of merchandising materials: the statement t-shirt. The shirt, w/c makes a simple declaration—“I ♥ Chabet”—across the chest, reproduces the mostly unexamined pride & affection conjured by invoking the influential artist’s name, be it in conversation, a magazine interview, on the gallery wall or window that carries an exhibition’s title, or on Facebook.
But other than pride, what this shirt also reproduces is the terror of fanhood. When one encounters the statement on another’s chest & reads it, one is not spared the plasticity & variability of the first-person pronoun: S/he who utters “I” takes the subject-position of the speaker, such that whoever reads “I ♥ Chabet” in turn professes—whether advertently or not—his/her affection for Chabet. The shirt, in a sense, can thus also function as a kind of command—a command to admire Chabet, to pay homage to the name of the father—that interpellates both fans & non-fans alike. Is it possible for members of the same artistic community to have different fathers, or are those who look up to other fathers terrorized into admiring the same name?
Visit the project site here
