Zola Jesus has carved a career around icy, mythic soundscapes, rooted in her youth growing up in Wisconsin. Especially in her early works, her signature, operatic wail felt like an echo from a fairy tale involving patricide and disemboweled animals. The artist embraced that aesthetic fully this month at a performance art exhibition in Queens, where she donned a shaggy white-and-grey animal costume (we’ll go with moss yeti) and sang a capella from a text, courtesy novelist Dennis Cooper. Its story? A dwarf gutting a young boy and seeing the universe in his digestive track. Some Skype harmonizing from Hungarian drone metal vocalist and Sunn O))) member Attila Csihar didn’t dispel the aura of woodland doom.
The event was helmed by Brandon Stosuy and Matthew Barney on August 3rd at the Remains space in Long Island City, Queens. It also included a horseshoe clinic and other performance art. Drew Reynolds captured the unique event in the gallery above. Zola Jesus will go on tour in the US and Europe starting in September through November.
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Horseshoe clinic at Remains, Queens, NYC, 8/3/2017
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Horseshoe clinic at Remains, Queens, NYC, 8/3/2017
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Horseshoe clinic at Remains, Queens, NYC, 8/3/2017
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Dennis Cooper reading via Skype, Remains, Queens, NYC, 8/3/2017
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Attila Csihar singing via Skype, Remains, Queens, NYC, 8/3/2017
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Zola Jesus at Remains, Queens, NYC, 8/3/2017
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Zola Jesus at Remains, Queens, NYC, 8/3/2017
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Zola Jesus at Remains, Queens, NYC, 8/3/2017
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Zola Jesus at Remains, Queens, NYC, 8/3/2017
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Zola Jesus at Remains, Queens, NYC, 8/3/2017