'Grey Cloud' and 'Yellow Droop' by Sarah Slappey.
Do you feel like that’s coming across in the art?
I do. I mean it’s hard to say—I wouldn’t say it’s an exact replication of the book, but it’s a larger, overarching theme in the exhibition, and I think what comes across is this kind of longing and perversity and a little bit of a sinister element.
It feels very topical.
Yeah. You mean in a sort of #MeToo type of way?
I guess so, yeah. But kind of like the other side of it.
Yes, exactly. I would almost say it’s against the grain of now. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the artist Balthus? People are sort of out there and they’re freaking out and saying to take the work down and that it sexualizes girls, and all this stuff, and absolutely he’s sexualizing little girls—but at the same time, little girls are not necessarily devoid of sexuality. And I feel there is a knee-jerk reaction right now, and it’s not necessarily a bad one, to say, ‘this is black, this is white, these men are bad men and they’re doing bad things, and these women or girls are pure and innocent.’ It's sort of bizarrely Victorian, almost, in its severity.
I know what you mean, it’s crazy. So was the Balthus a reference point? Or were you already working with artists that were in that gray area?
No, that’s just sort of a reference point for me in terms of a larger picture of this type of thing—like you said, things like Lolita. I’m sure if Lolita were published now, Nabakov would be chased out of the country or sued. I don’t know if it’s just me, but my own instinct is to push back against whatever seems to be the prevailing social mores of the moment. Even though these movements are, at their core, good, they can become their own form of suffocating censorship very quickly.
Which kind of plays into what you’re talking about, with this little girl who’s being suffocated by the bourgeoisie.
Right. She’s sort of bored in this bourgeoisie Germany, she’s very repressed and nobody is paying any attention to her and she’s just kind of masturbating all the time and having these intense fantasies. And it’s not just her—all the little girls in the book are similarly captivated by sexuality, which I think is definitely a normal part of childhood. I think most people probably were more experimental in their childhood than they would be comfortable admitting, even to themselves.