November - December 2018:
Koko, with text by Fan Wu
The Self is a gallery of cautious lips here given to ecstasy, there to surveillance; here to eating at the fruits of foreignness, there to sampling the endless delights of similarity; here to chaos, there to combustion. What you call your “identity” is the illegible gesture of the shapes that lie between two lines of text. Your gender falls to its knees to sing for you. Your structure of love is research toward spontaneity.
-- Fan Wu
Late last year, we welcomed Koko to begin working in our studio. Through writing, research and experimentation with a wide variety of media, Koko explored themes of personal memory, gender, presentation, and embodiment -- all the while developing a performance and installation they titled "Body as Proof." Together with a commissioned text by Fan Wu, we have reproduced 12 photographs from Koko's performance and installation.
Koko is a multimedia artist born in Lima, Peru and based in Toronto, Canada. Through a mixture of poetry, performance, painting, installation and video, Koko explores the social, cultural and spiritual regimes that intersect the human body. They are in a continuous dialogue between point 0 and 1 of the binary format, waltzing within the borders of fiction and reality.
Fan Wu is a metamorphosis-induced fantasist whose ethos’s trinity is responsiveness, surprise, and intimacy. He runs critical reading and creative writing workshops in conjunction with artist spaces across Toronto. His go-to karaoke songs include “Dancing in the Dark” and “Chop Suey!”.
Redd\Flagg Presents:
Performance and Installation by Koko
Text by Fan Wu
Please join us in celebrating the culmination of our first Artist-in-Residence program.
Performance: Saturday, Dec. 8th, 7 pm
Space is limited
Please RSVP to redding.flagg@gmail.com
Admission is free.
Exhibition hours: Monday, Dec 10th - Sunday Dec 16th, 2 - 6 pm (or by appointment)
Closing Reception: Friday, Dec 14th, 7 pm - 10 pm
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trans-
as prefix
from one point
to another.
i don’t know for sure who/what i am,
except that i was told i am (some)body.
i wrote a song about it
body as vehicle,
body as house,
body as document,
body as sculpture,
body as object with leaking contents,
as illusion
as truth
body as evidence
as proof
[...]
^ in constant process /transition.
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Koko is a multimedia artist born in Lima, Peru and based in Toronto, Canada. Through a mixture of poetry, performance, painting, installation and video, Koko explores the social, cultural and spiritual regimes that intersect the human body. They are in a continuous dialogue between point 0 and 1 of the binary format, waltzing within the borders of fiction and reality.
Fan Wu is a metamorphosis-induced fantasist whose ethos's trinity is responsiveness, surprise, and intimacy. He runs critical reading & creative writing workshops in conjunction with artist spaces across Toronto. His go-to karaoke songs include "Dancing in the Dark" and "Chop Suey!". To contact him for collaboration & camaraderie, please write to: fanwu2@gmail.com
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\\\\\ About Redd \ Flagg \\\\\
Redd \ Flagg supports artistic practices by providing regular studio rentals and access to space for workshops and community-oriented events.
Since 2018, Redd \ Flagg’s artist-in-residence program supplies a local emerging artist or collective with free studio space for one month. Through facilitated collaboration, studio visits and group critiques, the artist is given the opportunity to develop their work in a formal environment while receiving feedback from their peers. The structure of the residency is determined in close consultation with each artist or collective, dependent on their individual needs and capacities. A public exhibition or performance is optional. In conjunction with each residency, Redd\Flagg commissions a piece of critical and / or creative writing, composed as an evolving response to the artist’s work. With photographs and other documents of the artist’s practice, the commissioned text is then published, available in print and online.
The artist-in-residence program could not exist without the financial and organizational support of the artists who work full-time at Redd\Flagg. Thank you to all of our past and present studio tenants / friends / collaborators: Johnathan Adjemian, Basil AlZeri, Faraz Anoushahpour, Parastoo Anoushahpour, Victoria Cheong, Adrienne Crossman, Ryan Ferko, Oliver Husain, Felix Kalmenson, Katie Kotler, Jennifer Laiwint, Valerie Soo and Pöny.