Perhaps her most iconic and signature performance, Narcissister’s carnivalesque duet The Mannequin maps out the crisis of identify and representation, investigating femininity as the great enigmatic signifier. Romancing her ersatz twin to the tune of “They Don’t Love You Like I Love You” (Maps, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) Narcissister adopts the surrealist device of doubling to interrogate the gaze of the viewer and topple the myth of the passive and fixed female subject. One moment posing in statuesque perfection and the next overcome with the most voluptuary jouissance, her literally climactic ending, which, like many of her other pieces recalls the bitter sweet death of Narcissus, the hero who drowned while trying to embrace himself. Needless to say as Narcissister shifts with adroit mastery through the psychic registers responsible for the performativity of race, gender and sexuality; she poses some very important questions concerning identity, power and spectacle, chiefly - is the operation of Narcissism purely feminine?
- Katie Cercone, 2009
Tony Stamolis, 2007