Artist Marlène Charpentié presents an original performance as part of the Bourses de la Ville de Genève exhibition, organized by the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève at Le Commun.

Any work placed under a bell stops bleeding, but it’s to better suck the life from the living that the institution silently cuddles in its collections. In a feigned eternity, an old vampire diva steps forward: it’s the ghost of Louise Bourgeois, embodied by Marlène. Through reprise and détournement, they creates an absurd portrait on the artist’s spectre, and the grotesque becomes a critical strategy. The ever-changing readings of marginalized bodies beg the question of who will be the next to drink the blood. Clinging to the neck of an artist validated by the institution and by cis-white feminism, Marlène plunges into a rhetoric-free gothic cabaret. All that remains is a black feather boa, a symbol of vanity gone by, patent heels and a thong with a string dangling between her buttocks. The vampire figure is a playful way of poking fun at lesbian representations staged through a white, Western, heterosexual gaze. Marlène becomes a vampire Louise, a sexualized, lesbianized B-movie Louise. Louise’s work and image are once again vampirized in a slow, bleak and humorous tableau.

Note to audiences: Presence of nudity and sexual content.

Image : © Yoshiko Kusano