PUNKDEISM: Coco Dolle
December 8, 2019 - January 19, 2020
Photos by Mario Gallucci
Coco Dolle activates her concept project Legacy Fatale at Disjecta to bring an immersive installation experience of female empowerment and feminine mystique. Her exhibition PUNKDEISM is the amalgamation of her multi-faceted work which has morphed over the last ten years and is deeply rooted in the practice of her New York based performance art troupe Legacy Fatale. The troupe's mission is to raise neo-feminist awareness through community art happenings, movement and nature. Taking cues from ancient matriarchal myths and urban politics of resistance, Legacy Fatale is Coco Dolle’s inclusive social practice open to female-identifying artists, dancers, healers, educators, moms and activists. According to Dolle, the group’s founder: “Female leadership isn’t a social achievement [but] an educative tool. Legacy Fatale is an inter-generational concept that needs to breathe outside of constructed social systems.”
Made as a site-specific installation for Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, the exhibition PUNKDEISM displays an array of mediums including mural painting, drawings, watercolors, photography, video, a hand-sewn-fabric wall installation, and a public performance happening. The exhibition features a participatory community space, Punk Alter: Glamazon Activation Photobooth; a thirty five foot mural collage, Black Bark Diary; and an ongoing dance video projection, Harken the Veil.
In Punk Alter: Glamazon Activation Photobooth the public is invited to strike poses and take photos within the zone with their friends to embody a spirit of rebellion and empowerment stemming from revolutionary movements led by female leaders such as the Suffragettes, the Black Radical Women and most recently the Climate strike. The audience here is encouraged to activate the space and channel their inner rebel while taking selfies and posting online images of their physical interpretation of body-archetypes as superheroes, political activists and non-violent protesters. Posted images will use the tag #punkdeism, creating a record of the public's images.
Coco Dolle’s fascination for the Archetype of the warrior women and its historical manifestations started with what she calls the first feminist-consciousness collective recorded in art history: the formation of the nomadic Women warriors from Eurasia a.k.a, the ancient Greek Amazon Women warriors. From Antiquity to the Modern World, Dolle’s work unravels a historical revision study and performance experience shaping together narratives of resistance, decadence, empowerment, sisterhood and bold unapologetic glamour.
Black Bark Diary explores themes in the sacred and the profane. Displaying a selection of the photographic documentation of the performance happenings of Coco’s dance troupe Legacy Fatale over the past four years at their annual artist-in-residency in Upstate New York. More specifically theses photographs reflect upon the artist’s intention to create an inclusive intergenerational space within a natural environment, celebrating female identity and social practices reminiscent of women circles.
The painted mural acts as a backdrop where natural form meets optical art. An animal pattern turns to tree bark to geometrical lines as a symbolic evolutionary lifeline from wild nature to a consciousness raising. A zebra design is a reference to the animal as a herd, and a reverence to its clever optical effect–zebra stripes are scientifically proven to be a non-violent self-defense mechanism that blurs the vision of potential predators. The pattern has evolved as a way to confuse and discombobulate attackers as the herd becomes a mass of disruptive patterns and group movement becomes a united form. This pattern movement is at the core of the Legacy Fatale experience.
On the east side of the gallery, the viewer will experience Harken the Veil, a large-scale projection of a single looping video in which the artist Coco Dolle fervently and repeatedly loops and brushes a long black veil into the air above and around her head. Harken the Veil presents a metaphorical figure of the ethereal feminine, using the veil as a symbol of the shadow-self or the dark matter, delicate divider between life and death, motion and stillness, in perpetual cycles.
The public is invited to participate in a performance happening, Punkdeism Dances on the night of the opening December 7th, at 7pm. Dolle will lead the audience into a collective dance revival reminiscent of the teachings of Isadora Duncan, Anna Halprin and Starhawk. Open to all, Punkdeism Dances brings together ancient notions of collective healing with concepts of transgressive rituals where participants may directly experience a creative force of nature alive within each individual.
Artist and Curator Talk:
Thursday, December 5th, 7pm
Location: c3:initiative, 412 NW 8th Avenue
Opening Reception:
Saturday, December 7th, 6-9pm
Punkdeism Dances, public participatory dances, 7pm
Location: Disjecta, 8371 N Interstate Ave.