FotoFest is a photography biennial that has been running in Houston since 1986. Every iteration of Fotofest includes their official exhibits and a bunch of ancillary exhibits at galleries and spaces they call “Participating Spaces.” While each biennial has an official theme or organizing principal, the exhibits in the Participating Spaces are not required to match it. This year’s FotoFest theme is “Global Visions – FotoFest at 40.” They have an exhibit up at Sawyer Yards that is frankly staggering in its size and variety. The Participating Space exhibit at Seven Sisters is Babycakes, a group of somewhat disquieting photographs by someone who has made a career of disquieting photographs, Emily Peacock.
Many of the photographs on display focus on a single object centered on a slightly bunched piece of blue-green fabric, surrounded by sprigs of decorative flowers. Peacock selected bright colors for her objects; the end result are highly artificial candy-colored images. I am reminded of the photographs of Pierre et Gilles or of the video for the song “California Gurls” by Katy Perry. This is an esthetic that is simultaneously artificial and erotic. The Delicate, a photo of pink panties against a blue blanket is sexually disturbing.
The Delicate, The Tress and The Honorable were displayed like this in a row, which to my comics-poisoned mind suggests a narrative. The Honorable appears to be a photo of a toy scimitar—all three of the items showcased seem related to a little girl. Is this the story of a sex crime, as told by the Humbert Humbert who committed it? The highly aestheticized nature of the images implies a Humbertian vibe. Along with the disturbing blue of these photos, Peacock doesn’t forget blue’s girly partner, pink.
The chattering novelty teeth are a weird motif in Babycakes. In I Run My Mouth Off, teeth are a thing photographed—teeth clenched on long-burning cigarettes with long ashes barely hanging on. But in Proof of Affection, the teeth are used as mark making tools and as well as physical objects included in an assemblage.
This combines a photograph with a wooden frame that contains seven sets of chattering teeth. I was instantly reminded of Target With Plaster Casts and Target With Four Faces by Jasper Johns. Like Johns, Peacock combines an image with assemblage in Proof of Affection. The chattering teeth toys are like highly artificial versions of the body parts that Johns cast. The image, unlike John’s abstract target, is Peacock’s own body with plastic teeth marks on her ass. Peacock has used her own body in photographs and videos like this in the past, including in likewise sexually degrading poses. It has become something a trademark of Peacock’s. The degrading acts are parts of more-or-less ordinary, if somewhat adventurous, sex play such as biting (although the use of chattering teeth for it feels like an innovation) or dripping candle wax on your partner.
This object was hanging in Babycakes, but I don’t see it on the website for the show on the Seven Sisters website. (This is a roundabout way of saying I don’t know its title.) It is a photograph mounted in a wooden frame about two inches deep with a hole for displaying a photo that is somewhat eye-hole shaped—as if it were a viewer on a handmade 18th-century scientific instrument. The photograph is of a hand holding an old-fashioned portable tape recorder—the type favored by journalists in the 80s—in the act of recording a vagina as if conducting an interview. For some reason it made me think of Andy Warhol from his Interview magazine days.
The last piece I want to mention maintains the candy-color vibe and the somewhat disturbing reference to childhood without having much implied sexuality—but perhaps I’m just not seeing the erotic in Too Soft. In it, Peacock has affixed a digital disc player to the wall, decoratively attached with bright magenta tape, that plays a video called “Too Soft.” In the video, one sees a charred and burned marshmallow on a skewer as if one were making s’mores. Then the marshmallow starts to flame. Gradually it becomes obvious that this video is running backwards—the marshmallow slowly unburns as you watch it. When it is whole again, we can see the words “too soft” inscribed on the marshmallow.
I have seen most of Peacock’s exhibits in the past 15 years (at least, the ones in Houston), and while she always touches on sex in her shows, Babycakes feels the most sexual. In exhibits like You, Me & Diane or Soft Diet, sex is an aspect, but only one of several. If I were writing the monograph about Peacock’s career, sex would get its own section, and Babycakes would be the highlight. Babycakes is on view at Seven Sisters through April 25.
