For GB11, Lili Reynaud-Dewar (b. 1975, Grenoble) premieres a new film from her series Teeth, Gums, Machines, Future, Society, a project resulting from a number of trips she took to Memphis, Tennessee beginning in May 2009, when she was invited for a month-long residency, up until May 2016. She was able to reflect further on issues of body representation, this time from the viewpoint of Memphis’s agitated past involving race and civil rights and struggles, most notably the Sanitation Strike, which led to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968. Memphis’s music history is also striking, with figures like Robert Johnson and Elvis Presley.
But Reynaud-Dewar’s film focuses on a more recent musical history; for example, Three 6 Mafia, on Memphis label Hyponotized Minds. She also pays close attention to particular objects: grillz, metallic armor for the teeth, cherished in rap culture since the ‘90s. As in her other projects, Teeth, Gums, Machines, Future, Society is made up of elements that combine, add together, and complete one another. The film in GB11 incorporates a new performance centered on the symbolism of teeth—a recurring motif in her work—as the bodily representation of the threshold between public and private life. Gathering performers from the local stand-up comedy scene, she presents this group to her long-term collaborator noise musician Hendrik Hegray and to Ashley Cook, who performs a reading of feminist and science theoretician Donna Haraway’s seminal text "A Cyborg Manifesto" (1985), while the comedians engage in an intense discussion about teeth, racism, and the future.
Reynaud-Dewar’s multi-faceted projects usually involve an interweaving of sculpture, video, sound, and performance. They address an ongoing discussion on issues of the public/private body through a myriad of deconstructions. The works within her series sometimes share the same title, even if the series is made over an extended period of time. Live Through That ?! is a series from 2014 which was based on a text by the American poet Eileen Myles, describing the activity of flossing as a survival technique. The works from this year are all titled the same despite their differences and similarities. JV + AM
self-presentation:
1975:
Birth
1976:
First tooth
1990:
First HIV test. I take it with my best friend, who is just one year older than me. He finds out he is HIV positive.
1993:
First abortion.
1996:
Master’s in Public Law and Government Theory, University of Paris, Pantheon Sorbonne.
2000:
Death of my father.
My future boyfriend (who I don’t yet know at this time) has cancer. One of his testicles is removed. His sperm is frozen and preserved for the potential future insemination of a female partner.
2003:
Master’s in Fine Arts, Glasgow School of Arts.
Marriage to an artist.
2004:
My future boyfriend’s second testicle is removed. He is prescribed a testosterone treatment that he shall pursue for the rest of his life.
2008:
Last abortion.
2009:
First trip to the United States, to Memphis, Tennessee, for a three-week-long residency called Born Under A Bad Sign.
First encounter with actual "grillz" (gold armor for the front teeth, treasured by rappers in the American South).
2012:
Solo show, titled This Is My Space, at Le Magasin - Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France, where I meet my boyfriend for the first time. We fall in love.
2015:
Divorce from the artist.
First set of grillz (in silver) ordered via an Internet-based company called Krunk Grillz.
Death of Memphis-based "Dirty South" rapper Koopsta Knicca of the group Three 6 Mafia, the same day as Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman.
2016:
Second set of grillz (in gold) made by Gabby, a jeweler located on Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn.
First progesterone treatment.
Shooting of the film Teeth Gums Machines Future Society in Memphis, Tennessee.
Participation in GB11.
2018:
First prescription of Prep (Pre-exposure prophylaxis against HIV)
2020:
First child via an artificial insemination of my boyfriend’s frozen sperm.
2022:
Marriage with my boyfriend, after France’s president has enforced a law that denies unmarried parents any right over their children.