Mutant Salon

Happy to release the full video piece Where I Am My Own Other, Where My Mother Is Me (2017), a collaboration with mama @kimyekimyekimye . This piece grew out of an exchange initiated by Kiman artwork of mine in exchange for an act of fantasy fulfillment by Kim. I asked her to lead me through the trials of becoming a real woman. This played out in a live performance at @hammer_museum as part of Mutant Salon’s event at the museum in 2016, in which Kim played the mama to ...my baby girl. MS has always been a space for working through of our lived experience of the traumas of the systematic objectification, contempt, and policing of our bodies and identities with and amidst a community. I was releasing my body to Kim in the safe space of Mutant Salon. In the live performance, Kim berated me, spanked my ass, taught me how to do makeup, work the pole, attract a future husband, led me through my first period (and how to use pads), and led me through some other fucked up/damaging cliches and lived traumas of femininity and gender transition. We combined footage from the live performance along with new slow-motion studio shots to create the video piece Where I Am My Own Other, Where My Mother Is Me. We wanted to take moments of this fantasy/nightmare and to extend them, to use the medium of video to complicate time, external/introspective space, and popularized narratives of gender transition; to blur the lines of the public and private event of transitioning, of transness and femininity. It’s a piece that’s near and dear to me and Kim, through which we became so much closer, and has grown to include other films + live performances under the name Rites of Matrilineal Dissent. David Evans Frantz wrote an awesome short piece about the performance/video, which you can check out on my website. Hope you enjoy and are grossed out and tickled and saddened and all the feels. So many people to thank in the creation of the performance and video: @januaryparkosarnall @a___r___c @jacinto_astiazaran @annaluisapetrisko @white_boy_scream @colatcha #barbaratsmith @senormijo @platosbeard @davidevansfrantz <3 #transformationtuesday

#PrideMatters | Mutant Salon | Founded by Young Joon Kwak & Marvin Astorga in 2012, Mutant Salon is a beauty salon and roving platform for collaborative perform...ance and community-building that strives to foster connections between queer, trans, POC, womyn and mutant communities to celebrate an ethos of transformation and critical togetherness in the act of self care. At #SerendipityArtsFestival, Mutant Salon offered haircuts, makeup, nail care, and bodywork to visitors within a site-specific installation that also included zines and videos and live performances. This performance was part of Out of Turn, a project curated by Meenakshi Thirukode and Asia Art Archive. . . . Mutant Salon . . . #SAFforPride #PrideMonth #LGBTQI #loveislove #arts #humanrights #pride2019 #allweneedislove #loveisfreedom #loveforall #LGBTlove #SerendipityArtsFestival #SAF2018

SATURDAY NIGHT!

Maybe now we will take solidarity more seriously and put our bodies and our resources towards dismantling systems of white oppressive power while simultaneously building revolutionary models of human interconnection.

THE FINAL SCHEDULE OF PERFORMANCES AND LIST OF PARTICIPATING ARTISTS IS UP ON THE HAMMER WEBSITE: https://hammer.ucla.edu//mutant-salon-festival-de-las-mue/