Margot Samel is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Narcissister at Kendall Koppe, Glasgow. This is the artist's first solo exhibition in the UK and with each respective gallery. Presenting a series of masks and collages, the exhibition showcases Narcissister's repertoire of self-modulation, representation, and reconfiguration through the methods of performance and assemblage.
The central focus of Narcissister's practice is negotiating self-determination against the stereotypes of race, gender, and sexuality present in dominant society. With her masks- plastic reconfigurations of a Los Angeles wig display head designed by Verna Doran in 1965- Narcissister deploys humor and spectacle to reflect on the constructed nature of femininity and sexuality. Wearing her masks during performances, such as EveryWoman,performed at the opening evening of the exhibition, the artist references burlesque dancing and the strip tease as models where desire is located in the ideological assumptions of the subject's viewer, rather than their subjectivity itself.
In her collages, Narcissister pulls imagery from pop culture, architectural magazines, art history, and more to put into composition the ways that one's sense of subjectivity and desire may be constructed through another's breaking down. For example, in UntitledSummerVibesSeries(Frogs)(2024), the artist hides pornographic imagery among lily pads in what could be a perfectly lush private garden. The combination suggests erotic desire as a transferable experience - one might feel turned on by their own garden, or desire the ownership over a woman's body. This both amplifies the ways in which those prescribed as sexually and racially deviant from "the norm" are objectified, and poses a reclamation of that objectification through returning the gaze of the desirer. It is a brilliant and uncanny "I have what you want/you want what you can't have" wink the artist performs.
