Chaos, Whims, Lust takes the allegorical classic Journey to the West – a story of male ascension to sainthood through the shunning, maiming, and killing of women — and reimagines it as a narrative of sisterhood, matriarchy, and rebellion. Comprised of over fifty figurative ink and gouache drawings, interwoven with open verse and prose poetry, the series plays with the source material’s patriarchal, puritanical underpinnings by recasting its male monks and disciples as monstrous, hybridized animal-women, and the trickster figure of the Monkey King serves as protagonist and alter-ego to examine the noted absence of female tricksters in mythology.
The trickster is a liminal and ambiguous figure who takes on many faces and traits – idiocy and wisdom, detachment and devotion, wit and somberness – yet rarely rendered female. Instead, clever women in mythology are admonished: not called trickster but witch, seen not as playful but deadly, and punished for their irreverence.
This body of work was first exhibited at the Knockdown Center in the fall of 2019.
