L.A.U.R.E.L. Drag Ball

As part of her two-month residency at the Centre of Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle (CCA) in Warsaw Poland, New York-based artist Lynne Chan creates a new iteration of her long-standing L.A.U.R.E.L project. This time the artist creatively addresses and resurfaces a forgotten piece of history of the building that hosts the CCA galleries as well as the artist residency studios and apartments: during the reign of Stanislaw August Poniatowski in Poland in the late-eighteenth century, the King’s royal courts were the sites of cross-dressing balls. Lynne’s project takes shape as an installation and performance imagining L.A.U.R.E.L as a royal drag ball.

L.A.U.R.E.L (or Lesbians and Unicorns Resisting Every Limit) is a video and performance art project. The name is taken from a forgotten activist group from the 1980s. As an art project, L.A.U.R.E.L has taken shape as a hobby group, a sweatshop, a dance party, a New Age cult, and an underground movement. The so-called rules of membership or participation are very open, much like the shape of the organization.

As part of the first phase of this project, the artist is making a series of flags from bed sheets. The flags are inspired by pop imagery, gay iconography, royal emblems, and revolutionary flags. According to the artist, “these bedsheets make reference as a political act, an act of intimacy, and also a playful performative gesture.” The flags are first placed in the homes and bedrooms of anyone interested in participating in the project, for which the artist and the CCA sent out a large open call for participation to their local and international mailing list. These flags are part of an installation and drag ball performance in the Wejście Gallery at Ujazdowski Castle on July 21, 2007.

This residency and event-based artwork are part of Art in General’s Eastern European Residency Exchange (EERE) gives artists an opportunity to create a new work in a new context, and to meet and interact with art communities in Eastern Europe and New York City. Lynne Chan is nominated by the Art in General by the Center for Contemporary Art Ujadowzski Castle in Warsaw, Poland.

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