Upon entering "White Petals Surround Your Yellow Heart" at the Institute of Contemporary Art on campus, you’ll be greeted by Rip Cord Rex—a futuristic tribal figurine that ferociously glares at you with his gaping, bottomless sockets. Rip Cord—and his surrounding friends—comprise the late rapper/artist RAMMELLZEE’S “Garbage Gods and Monsters Models.”
His brightly adorned villains are only a small part of the exhibit that aims to communicate the power of “adornment” in expressing our inner selves. Essentially, the show conveys the idea that “nature has endowed us with one skin too few.” Take a good look at yourself in the mirror before walking into the ICA, because this show celebrates the Narcissus in each of us.
So, how do we choose to express our inner selves to society? The featured artists took this simple question and answered it with various forms of adornment. For example, one artist publicized gender politics by reproducing Lynda Bengli’s image on a
t–shirt depicting a woman with breasts and a fully erect penis.
The exhibit also conveys softer messages such as a short story about a man and his memory–carrying saddle shoes. Additionally, there’s the three–minute “Vogue Paris Studio” film, which presents strong, fierce women whose limbs are digitally stretched into lanky contortions. Each model “titillates death and is already something different.” Glamour and macabre are mixed, quite deliberately.
Near the end of the exhibit, you’ll find an overly ornate mirror on the wall. While the outlandishness of some pieces may distract from the intellectual motive of the exhibit, this piece encapsulates it all. Although it could be deemed vain to stare at yourself in a mirror, this artist considered such vanity a healthy and necessary mode of self–identification.
Anthony Elms, the Associate Curator, hoped to reference throughout the exhibit how our age is one of constant self–evaluation. We do it constantly without thinking—often using photos and information through social media. This exhibit reminds us that how we choose to brand ourselves ultimately reflects our values.
Elms included an excerpt from Ovid’s "Metamorphoses" in the introduction to the exhibit as a cautionary tale. Narcissus drowned by falling (literally) in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. His body was never found. What remained, instead, was “a flower with a circle of white petals round a yellow center.”
