Beauty Temple, 2024

A pop-up beauty salon at Open Source Gallery, staffed with professional beauty workers. Visitors get free hair, nails or makeup service. Open from June 15 to July 26, 2024.

This project is my 3rd attempt to propose an afterlife for Baby Bobolete, a Brazilian queer clown created by the late actor Caike Luna (1979-2021). In her skits she spoke of opening her own beauty salon in NYC, but it was always a lie, meant to impress her friends - for most working-class people in Latin America, moving to NYC is the ultimate dream of success. The Beauty Temple realizes that dream for Bobolete.

The gallery is set up with furniture, decorations, equipment and supplies for beauty work. A team of 4 beauticians - Aub, Mich Li, Jocelyne Rodriguez and Hannah Lillevoy - provide service to visitors. Their professional practice is presented as performance art.

Besides free beauty service, the Beauty Temple featured a public program of performances and talks. Artists Celestina, Hannah Lillevoy and Micca presented original performances, created for the show. I also offered a series of 3 talks on fan fiction, queer labor, art and spirituality.