6000 Degrees

Here are some excerpts from my 2003 work 6000 Degrees. As you can see in the video above, Monica struggles with issues of identity and individuality.

Monica struggles a lot, but seems to conclude that her life is unique.

Yet the gallery installation of her “struggle” presented five 10′ tall screens running a simultaneous cacophony of 76 different, putatively unique Monicas.

There’s that old Zen parable… “who’s to say what’s good and what’s bad…”

And perhaps the same could be said for persona. Who’s to say who’s a unique human being.

When Pollock & de Kooning poured their guts onto canvas, it was “real.” But a few years later Rauschenberg & Warhol showed that it could also be performed.

We think our identity is real, unique, and inevitable. But a contemporary artist like Nikki S. Lee shows that identity can be performed.

Or… perhaps all of Nikki S. Lee’s persona’s are “real”…