This performance was conducted in July of 2001 on Chung King Road in China Town in Los Angeles, The performance was constructed for a group exhibition that I was participating in. The title of the exhibition was ‘New Romantic’.
For the opening of the exhibition, I rode up and down Chung King road on a live Unicorn. I was wearing a long blond wig, a feminine ivory colored dress (which was cut and torn), and was carrying a small boom box that was loudly playing a compilation of romantic, sappy love songs. Large bruises and cuts decorated the parts of my body that were exposed.
This performance was meant to examine and critique the impossibility of actually realizing fantasy. Desires and fantasies are generally much more effective when they remain in the realm of the intangible. It is precisely the awkward attempt at materialization that corrupts them. With this piece I hoped to create a sort of ‘tableaux vivante’ Hallmark Card that was at once beautiful and pathetic. I was also interested in exploring the stereotypical ‘young-girl-with-a-horse-fetish” stereotype, whose phallic emphasis is highlighted by the extra long horn on the horses head.
