Rubens’ Peel

A performance at Hercules Art Studio Program, NYC | Feb 21st, 2019 | Directed by: Alison Kizu-Blair

Rubens’ Peel is a rough-shod solo clown show created and performed during a six-week guest residency at Tribeca’s Hercules Art Studio Program in early 2019. The piece uses found objects, a geranium, fruit, archival video, sound, and puppets to probe colonialist narratives, queer ideas of ancestry, and trouble conventional notions of masculinity from the 1800s to the present.

Taking its initial starting point from the 1801 oil painting, Rubens Peale with a Geranium, by Rembrandt Peale, the show incorporates Peale’s artist lecture followed by a loosely scripted interview between me and the artist. Rambling and highly emotional, the interview unravels, resulting in a cross-generational murder. The confusion builds to a crescendo as I perform a funeral and take care of some gardening tasks while behind me, a grief-stricken Judy Garland fervently sings “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Image Credits: Ben Simon