Ain't Misbehavin', 2022, Video
- Medium
- Two-channel video installation with wallpaper.
- Dimensions
- Dimensions variable. Duration: 14 minutes.
For the work Ain’t Misbehavin’, 2022, Boyce has re-worked the performance documentation from her exhibition, Six Acts, 2018, to re-stage a sense of reverie and abundance that characterises the other performances of that night by Lasana Shabazz and the drag collective Family Gorgeous (Cheddar Gorgeous, Anna Phylactic, Venus Vienna and Liquorice Black).
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Six Acts was a project that attracted world-wide attention for the take down of a Pre-Raphaelite painting ‘Hylas and the Nymphs’, (1896), by John William Waterhouse held by Manchester Art Gallery.
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In Ain’t Misbehavin’, Lasana Shabazz begins the films in front of a painted portrait of a black male, the first work of art to enter the collection of the Manchester Art Gallery in the nineteenth century. The painting by James Northcote 'Othello, The Moor of Venice', (1826) was originally titled ‘The Moor’ meaning simply ‘The Black’. The anonymity inherent in the title was changed after museum curators discovered that it was a portrait of the celebrated 19th-century Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge, who had a prolific career first in the US where he was born, and then in the UK.
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Shabazz appears in drag, a performative mode that is often associated with Shakespearean theatre when females were forbidden to publicly appear on stage and, instead, males played female roles. Aldridge, as a performer, was also known to appear as a black-face minstrel – a racist caricature of African Americans typically performed by white actors – he also performed in white-face when he played white characters on stage. Shabazz delves into these complex and contradictory identity formations as he interacts with the invited audience, who are coerced into responding to his uncomfortable prompts.
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Across both projects, transgressions proliferate. They un-mask and resist binaries, instead releasing historical constraints and conditions, whether that is about the imagined certainties of race or gender or sexuality – and criss-cross between the everyday and the extraordinary.
Wallpaper series
Clapping Wallpaper 2
2024
Braided Hair Wallpaper
2023
Coloured Wallpaper
2023
Ain't Misbehavin'
2022
FEELING HER WAY
2022
Devotional Wallpaper and Placards
2008 - 2018
We move in her way
2017
Just One Minute More
2016-2022
Crop Over
2007
Lover's Rock
1998
Head I (Skin) / Head II (Dread)
1995
Clapping Wallpaper
1994
Related theme: Sound / Singing
BENEVOLENCE
2024
In the Mix: Alexandra B’s Dress
2022
FEELING HER WAY
2022
In the Mix: Shirley Songs
2022
In the Mix: Skunk Sputnik
2022
Ain't Misbehavin'
2022
In the Mix: Hippy Liberty
2022
In the Mix: Disciples Together
2022
In the Mix: Mel & Kim Respect
2022
On My Way
2022
Polystyrene / X-ray Spex OH BONDAGE UP YOURS!
2021
Sade / The Sweetest Taboo
2021
Shirley Bassey / Goldfinger
2021
Sheila Chandra / Ever so lonely MONSOON
2021
Miss Elizabeth Welch 1933 – 1940 / a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square
2021
P. P. Arnold / Just call me angel of the morning
2021
Devotional Wallpaper and Placards
2008 - 2018
Six Acts
2018
Just One Minute More
2016-2022
Exquisite Cacophony
2015
Move
2013
Plastic
2013
Gather:Justicia
2010
Oh Adelaide (with Ain Bailey)
2010
Taken
2009
Drift
2008
For you, only you
2007
1930s to 1960s – The Rivington Place Portfolio
2006
Devotional II
2005
Devotional, 2004
2004
Lover's Rock
1998
Related theme: Performance
BENEVOLENCE
2024
Yes, I Hear You
2022
On My Way
2022
FEELING HER WAY
2022
In the Mix: Shirley Songs
2022
In the Mix: Skunk Sputnik
2022
Ain't Misbehavin'
2022
In the Mix: Hippy Liberty
2022
In the Mix: Disciples Together
2022
Family Gorgeous Smudged
2022
In the Mix: Mel & Kim Respect
2022
In the Mix: Alexandra B’s Dress
2022
Sheila Chandra / Ever so lonely MONSOON
2021
Miss Elizabeth Welch 1933 – 1940 / a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square
2021
Shirley Bassey / Goldfinger
2021
P. P. Arnold / Just call me angel of the morning
2021
Polystyrene / X-ray Spex OH BONDAGE UP YOURS!
2021
Sade / The Sweetest Taboo
2021
Devotional Wallpaper and Placards
2008 - 2018
The Audition
1997 - printed 2018
Six Acts
2018
We move in her way
2017
Just One Minute More
2016-2022
Paper Tiger Whisky Soap Theatre (Dada Nice)
2016
Exquisite Cacophony
2015
Move
2013
Dance of Belém
2011
Gather:Justicia
2010
Oh Adelaide (with Ain Bailey)
2010
Taken
2009
Drift
2008
For you, only you
2007
Crop Over
2007
Exquisite Tension
2006
1930s to 1960s – The Rivington Place Portfolio
2006
Devotional II
2005
Devotional, 2004
2004
Related theme: Participatory / Collaboration
BENEVOLENCE
2024
Yes, I Hear You
2022
Ain't Misbehavin'
2022
FEELING HER WAY
2022
Family Gorgeous Smudged
2022
The Audition in Colour
1997 - printed 2020
In the Castle of My Skin
2020 - 2021
Six Acts
2018
Devotional Wallpaper and Placards
2008 - 2018
The Audition
1997 - printed 2018
We move in her way
2017
Paper Tiger Whisky Soap Theatre (Dada Nice)
2016
Exquisite Cacophony
2015
Move
2013
Dance of Belém
2011
Gather:Justicia
2010
Oh Adelaide (with Ain Bailey)
2010
Taken
2009
Drift
2008
Crop Over
2007
For you, only you
2007
Exquisite Tension
2006
Devotional II
2005
Devotional, 2004
2004
Tongues
1997
Untitled (Kiss)
1995