Tales of two Camerons
“Near, far, wherever you are…”. These lyrics—from Celine Dion’s theme song for the 1997 blockbuster Titanic—are forever imprinted on the minds of Millennial teenagers turned on by tragic lovers Jack and Rose. All devotees of this watery James Cameron film will no doubt enjoy avant-garde comic performer Dynasty Handbag’s version of the iceberg drama—co-conceived with the video artist SUE-C—to be unveiled at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn this week (Titanic Depression, 20-21 May). Dynasty, the alter ego of artist Jibz Cameron, promises a multimedia smorgasbord, telling us: “I play all the characters. Some of them are cartoons. The Billy Zane character is a blue dildo named Dick Assinhole.” Dynasty, there is only one thing to say—draw me like one of your French girls.
Matthew Barney’s new film tackles the violent pageantry of American football
© Matthew Barney, Photo: Julieta Cervantes
Conceptual art titan Matthew Barney is having a moment. The entertainment company Metrograph is showing his Cremaster Cycle series (1994-2002) at its Lower East Side cinema through June. But the event that has art world tongues wagging is his new work Secondary (2023), a five-channel video installation reflecting the “complex overlay of violence and spectacle inherent in American football”, as his website says, focusing especially on a 1978 incident—with some contemporary parallels—that left Darryl Stingley of the England Patriots paralysed after colliding with Jack Tatum of the Oakland Raiders.
Nine-year-old Hadrian’s sculpture Sour Lemon Habby on view at Nada New York
Courtesy Children’s Museum of the Arts
Lemonade stands are as American as apple pie and Abe Lincoln’s beard, giving children the chance to sell their best citrus-flavoured drink while internalising the American values of free enterprise and unfettered capitalism. A “lemonade stand” that will sell art, not juice, at the Nada New York fair (18-21 May), comes courtesy of Children’s Museum of the Arts (CMA), which had the tip-top idea of selling works created by the children of New York. All sales proceeds benefit CMA’s Emergency Arts Education Fund, an initiative responding to Department of Education budget cuts. Get your wallets ready.