Chaperone with Kalup Linzy

Desperate Living, New Line Cinema, 1977

Wednesday, July 22nd, 7 pm

Desperate Living

(John Waters, 1977)

EFA Project Space presents Chaperone, a weekly screening series consisting of films handpicked by a group of artists, all whose work provocatively explores disparate aspects of our culture’s love affair with mediated reality.

EFA Project Space welcomes the artist Kalup Linzy, as he chaperones the movie, Desperate Living (1977):

“For a long time, I was a fan of John Waters’ film Serial Mom with no familiarity of his previous work. Shortly after beginning the Conversations Wit de Churen series, I was accepted into the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. There, the faculty and my mentors suggested I look at early John Waters films. One film in particular, Desperate Living (1977), captured my imagination the most. Having first viewed Desperate Living a quarter of a century after its release, this classic film gave me the courage to freely and subversively explore subjects of race, gender and sexuality in my own video work — in particular, Conversations Wit de Churen 4: Play Wit de Churen and KK Queen Survey. In these particular works, psycho-sexually charged domestic drama, bad nerves, irreverent relationships, and characters who often could care less about each other’s feelings all reflect Waters’ influence.”

Image courtesy the artist, Kalup Linzy

Kalup Linzy is a video and performance artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Born in Stuckey, Florida, Linzy received his MFA from the University of South Florida in 2003, and also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Linzy’s best-known work is a series of politically charged videos that satirizes the conventions of the television soap opera. His works have been included in exhibitions as far-ranging as Black Alphabet at The Zacheta National Museum in Warsaw Poland, and Frequency, Thelma Golden’s survey of new art by emerging artists of color at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Recently, Linzy’s work was included in Prospect.1 New Orleans, curated by Dan Cameron; Modern Mondays: An Evening with Kalup Linzy at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Glasgow International: Festival of Contemporary Visual Art, Glasgow, Scotland; and 30 Americans, Rubell Family Collection, all in 2008. Linzy has been the recipient of numerous awards, including a grant from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation in 2005, a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2007, and, most recently, a 2008 Creative Capital Foundation grant, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship, and an Art Matters Grant.

EFA Project Space is located at 323 West 39 Street, 2nd Floor.

The Chaperone program has been organized by Ian Cooper, artist, and Michelle Levy, Program Director, EFA Project Space.

Sponsorship provided by

For more information on the event, contact projectspace@efanyc.org, or 212-563-5855 x 151