Filmoteka Muzeum

Tribute to Gloria Viagra. Birthday Party is a documentary footage of Kozyra’s daring performance carried out to celebrate the birthday of drag queen Gloria Viagra at Berlin’s Big Eden club.

Kozyra made an appearance as a surprise-girl and acted Gloria's lookalike, which was not a matter of chance, since it was the Berlin-based drag queen that had become Kozyra's teacher and mentor of 'true womanhood' in the cycle In Art Dreams Come True.

Dressed like Gloria, wearing stage make-up and a wig, Kozyra sings a song by Robbie Williams, performing at the same time a symbolic striptease, which sees its culmination when she tears off her artificial penis and sticks it in her purse.

Complementing her series of works which address art as a way to make dreams come true, the artist’s show acquires the character of a double homage. On the one hand, to her teacher of the art of being a real woman, while on the other – to the urge to redefine and transgress gender-related borders.

References: Katarzyna Kozyra, Casting, exhibition catalogue, M. Sitkowska, H. Wróblewska (eds.), Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw 2010.
 

(AH)

Year: 2006
Duration: 4'32"
Language: English
Source: DigiBeta

© Katarzyna Kozyra, courtesy Zachęta National Gallery of Art

Acquisition date: Jan 30, 2012
Acquisition: deposit
Ownership form: deposit

WORKS FROM THAT ARTIST IN THE COLLECTION