This exhibition is offered by the Spencer Museum of Art for the educational and artistic purposes described in the exhibition description. The exhibition contains adult themes and viewer discretion is advised.
Kalup Linzy
born 1977 Clermont, Florida; lives and works in New York, New York
Keys to Our Heart, 2008
single channel video
Courtesy of the artist and Taxter & Spengemann, New York
The video and performance work of Kalup Linzy draws from a wide range of popular media sources: afternoon soap operas, Spanish-language novellas, the Hollywood tearjerker, gay drag performances, reality TV, and the culture of You Tube videos. Through his satirical exploitation of these over-the-top enactments of life, Linzy explores highly charged themes such as gender, sexuality, race, class, and popular culture.
This video, Keys to Our Heart, debuted at Prospect.1 New Orleans in 2008. The video consists of three black-and-white vignettes set in a vaguely southern location and shot in the style of an old Hollywood movie. Performing in drag, Linzy stars as the protagonist, who is a bitter, middle-aged woman offering a trio of young people skewed perspectives on life and love. By dubbing the other characters with his own voice-over, Linzy effectively assumes all the roles in the work, turning the performance into a reflexive monologue.