Castigating America’s obsession with beauty and glamor (the old
spelling is anathema to Microsoft Word, by the way) is as pointless as
ridiculing our other prime directives, money and power; these are
innate drives, and we’re not transcending them anytime soon. They do
make target-rich environments for satire, though: age cannot wither nor
custom stale their infinite variety.
The San Jose printmaker Kathy Aoki has made merry with female
role-conditioning for years, often taking a Pop-culture angle to skewer
her targets, as in her female construction workers who build monuments
to, say, lip gloss. In her new installation, The Museum of
Historical Makeovers, she continues this strategy, but includes
past civilizations that seem to have been retroactively contaminated by
ours — ancient Egypt, Age-of-Reason France, and 19th-century
industrial America. She also has fun with the conventions of
blockbuster shows in the Tut mold: the gallery walls are painted,
museum-style, and the labels for Aoki’s “mock documents” simulate
scholarly didactics almost too accurately.Among MOHM’s treasures are
artifacts from the reign (2009-2061 AD) of the bearded female pharaoh
(and former pop diva) Gwen Stefani, excavated from Melrose, LaBrea,
Dodger Stadium, and Hollywood Hills sites: a carved cartouche featuring
hieroglyphs for GG, hip-hop, MP3, and Angel Harajuku girl; alabaster
coasters for an afterlife of plenteous Indian Pale Ales and Mojitos;
“Hollaback Girl” ushabtis or shabtis, small figurines magically
compelled to serve the dead after burial; a stela bearing “shopping
ankhs;” a flash drive that technicians were miraculously able to
penetrate and decipher; and canopic jars that stored only memories and
tunes rather than vital organs. The Tomb Room, unfortunately, was
closed, due to vandalization of the sarcophagus, but museumgoers could
examine the large, skylighted gallery (a tiny model, in reality)
through a small peephole, a nice foil to the spirit doors in Egyptian
tombs.
Aoki pokes fun at Euro-American cultures as well, with ink drawings
ostensibly prepared for Diderot’s Encyclopédie ou
Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des
métiers, but lost, such as “Le Tatouage Bas de Dos
(Lower-back Tat),” and etchings documenting 19th-century cosmetic
procedures (“The Brazilian,” “The Anal Bleaching Lesson”) that may
remind you of grimly heroic dissection paintings by Rembrandt (“The
Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp”) and Thomas Eakins (“The Gross
Clinic”). The Museum of Historical Makeovers runs through
October 25 at Swarm Gallery (560 2nd St., Oakland). Also
showing: Chris Sicat’s sculptures of lustrously graphite-covered
branches and stumps of redwood, pine, maple, cherry and ash. SwarmGallery.com or 510-839-2787
