The artist who willingly put herself in ‘jail’
Super controversial performance artist Ann Liv Young is behind bars. Well, kind of. The bars are part of a fake jail in a performance art space in Brooklyn. And the crime is transgression against art.
The imprisonment is part of “Ann Live Young in Jail,” a theatrical punishment for Young’s crimes. The story is this: In 2013, Young, as her alter ego Sherry, interrupted another artists’ show at the annual festival of contemporary performance. Young (or Sherry, anyway) didn’t like one of the acts, and began harassing the artist through a megaphone — the harassment ended in a physical altercation and Young was banned from the festival. Many were upset with her disruption.
So when the director of Brooklyn art space Jack’s wanted to feature Young in a piece, he decided to punish her as performance.
The result is an unusual show (which lasted four nights and ended over the weekend), with Young improvising a performance in front of whoever visited her over the four hours she was in her “cell” per night. As the New York Times reports.
The audience was free to come and go, but Young’s antics were mesmerizing enough keep them captive. And art jail didn’t seem to change Young’s attitude. “I don’t really feel like I should be in jail,” she said. “Because I don’t feel like I did anything wrong.” It does, however, raise interesting questions about what is and isn’t permissible in the art world, what warrants “punishment,” and what an “art jail” really makes. Plus, it puts Ann Live Young in a big spot on the modern art map, and we bet she won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.
