The Easter Bunny, Just As Charming, Just As Fake (2010)

The domestic, the family, the holy matrimony—these are the structures of power that have continually both nourished and limited the female figure. This is the struggle I have addressed in “The Easter Bunny—Just As Charming and Just As Fake” Ovoid/Void piece (2010) wherein I invited the audience to walk on a ground made of resin trays filled with resin eggs. The intrinsic fragility of our ground is based on being identified as the weaker sex, whose main contributions to productivity, familial and domestic, are mostly invisible. I capitalize in the tension of these irreconcilable conflicts—of woman whose value is weighed through her ability to stay and comply, whose strength is in her stoic desperation and the ability to cope through it all in the name of the keeping the balance.

Nikki Luna

 

Ovoid/Void

Reworking the notion of fragility vis-à-vis domesticity through an ubiquitous household material, the artist invites contemplation on that paradox: the home/family as the most active site of both sexuality and discipline. The body is both captive and carnal, obliged to reproduce so as to maximize life (read: reproduce labor force).

Luna recreates a space where the fear of breaking this precarious balance is at its peak. You are not welcome to come in. A white wall made up of crushed egg shells blocks the entrance to a twenty-square meter area filled up with resin ovoids on trays. This ground is unstable. The forbidden private made open to the public and the breakable solid ground creates a space rife with tension. 

These are the contradictions wherein Luna invites us to walk in and walk on. The culture of fear and loving has created power meshes that are the most difficult to break. One can only trespass and let go so far. Whether anything breaks, it doesn’t matter. The system will only churn out more affections from the same mold to fill up the oviod/void. Everything wretchedly stays.

Adjani Arumpac