Fashion-performance Weld Queen’s ongoing actionist project, “Exhibit,” entails a number of irregular art interventions in different art institutions. Weld Queen participates in the “Exhibit” initiative, visiting modern art exhibitions while wearing specially tailored welding suits. She inevitably engages the audience and the exhibition’s theme in conversation.
Weld Queen literally invades the personal space of the spectator while posing as an artist and her “own work,” creating new bonds inside the triangle of “piece of art — spectator — artist.”
Weld Queen’s exhibition images are an integral part of her individual artistic mythology, based on the unique features of professional identity. The artist creates her “welding” reality with her own laws, internal relationships (queen-vassals-maids of honor, etc.) and even aesthetic canons. In this reality, above all else, the hard and creation-oriented labor is valued. In the profession of a welder, it is open and illustrative, however, labor is a universal good, therefore the image of a welder is only a starting point for the popularization of this idea (both in the art world and in the society). Weld Queen’s own example shows how to build a bridge between such a different world of welding and artistic creation, how to make your work and professional activity prestigious, worthy of elevating to the rank of high art and high fashion.
Each suit is one of the organic images of the “welding reality” on the one hand, and the stereotypes of our reality on the other hand. An invariable accessory of each image is a welding helmet – a distinctive definition of a professional specialization of the artist, at the same time imitating the crown metaphorically.
2017-2018
