In a contemporary world of suppositions presented as a healthy suppository of systemically administered fact, the current exchange and special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States of America is providing exciting new prospects. The UK has proposed to offer Oboddaddy 1, by Sarah Lucas, as an instrument of justice to beat down efforts of fake news and propaganda alike. Oboddaddy 1, a giant pink phallic shaped sculpture, can also be used as an instrument of punishment and retribution. Currently, there is discussion between the White House and the UK Prime Minister to order those guilty of propagating falsehoods and untruths to sit on it. Similar to the public shaming of the pillory, Sarah Lucas’s ‘knob’—part of an exhibition aptly titled Penetralia—would act as an artwork, an instrument of justice, and a public performance.
Lanfranco Aceti #COTUS (Curator Of The United States), who chose Sarah Lucas for this particular installation at the White House, said that the artwork “blended several media including participatory performance.” “It will be so exciting,” stated the artist, ”to see people dragged on the North Lawn of the White House to meet their fate. It will be even more interesting to see politicians who fall foul of this new ordinance, to be punished in such a public,interactive, and spectacular way. My concern is that the initial inspiration that is community based and for a common good might be re-oriented toward capitalistic monetization and economic exploitation—a Disneyfication and Hollywoodization of the events, with the selling of popcorn, soda, and pork chop on a stick, more focused on entertainment than a moment of reflection on the importance of truth and its definition.”
Sarah Lucas’s Oboddaddy 1 (2010) follows preceding installations on The Fifth Column of artists like Maurizio Cattelan and Grayson Perry.
Aceti explained, “Lucas has been chosen because of her artistic practice which since the 1990s has proven to carry, as Ken Johnson writes in The New York Times, “a deeper resonance, which comes from how they connect the viscerally low-minded and the intellectually high.”
“As #COTUS,” Aceti concludes, “I am extremely proud of having been afforded this opportunity and having chosen Sarah Lucas’s artwork. Although Lucas could be identified as a feminist artist, her artworks carry the beauty and hypocrisy of contemporary heteronormative society. They exist as a reminder of other things that have been eliminated from the picture. Accusations of vulgarity towards Lucas’s work have remained unfounded because the artworks—if compared to contemporary social behaviours and sexual practices—appear rather elegant and full of composure. The same can not be said, however, for the vulgarity with which we are constantly subjected to by our institutions, politicians, and fellow citizens. It is my hope that, once the law is enacted, the ceremony of pillory of condemned common citizens and politicians alike will be called Penetralia in homage to the artist who has provided this wonderful instrument.”
Oboddaddy 1 will stand on The Fifth Column for the next forty-nine days, after which it will be substituted by a new artwork selected by Lanfranco Aceti, Curator Of The United States or #COTUS.
Suppository is, as stated in the Oxford Dictionary, “A medicinal preparation, typically in the form of a small, solid cone or cylinder of a base material that becomes soft or liquid at body temperature, administered by insertion into the rectum, vagina, or urethra (or, esp. in early use, any body orifice other than the mouth).”
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