My favourite response to the performance was the violent anger that it provoked in some people. And they were right, of course. We are being taken for fools. But when we start laughing at the powerful, they can prove remarkably fragile. Ceausescu’s fall was an education.
Flyers were distributed during the performance, with links to free downloadable 3D models of the heads, and a competition inviting people to make their own creative use of them.
Last Laugh – Venice
2019. Pop-up performance at the Venice Biennale.
The locally recruited actors responded to wearing these giant heads and the non-stop manic laughter tracks with a fantastically inventive range of gestures and body language. The rictus expressions of the masks seemed to come alive.
Legacy
2019. Alabaster. 40 x 40 x 16 cm.
My father gave me a block of alabaster as a birthday present. It sat around for a year or two while I thought of something appropriate to do with it. Then he died, and the decision became even more charged. I thought about all the knowledge and interests and values that I admired about him, and which I aspire to emulate. They became embodied in objects and symbols, wrapped as a present, decorated with a bow, and owing something to the tradition of veiled funeral sculpture.
Last Laugh – Venice
Last Laugh – Venice
Legacy