Teeth Gums Machines Future Society

Subculture Meets Identity Meets Performance

How do we define cultural, social, and emotional identity? What influences their creation? Throughout her entire oeuvre, the French artist Lili Reynaud-Dewar (*1975, La Rochelle) circles these questions, while at the same drawing upon the twentieth century’s artistic and social subcultures. One major element of Teeth, Gums, Machines, Future, Society (the name of her exhibition, performance, and catalogue) are so-called grills: dental jewelry made of precious metals. They are almost like holy relics in rap and hip-hop culture and have thus become status symbols. As a white, European, female artist who has adopted grills, Dewar not only confronts questions about cultural appropriation and its legitimation, but she also expands the theme to include the cyborg, as the blend of human, machine, and nature, in which normative boundaries such as class, race, and gender recede into the background.

In the conversations the artist conducts with the performers, this publication works through the central themes of her oeuvre. The book also contains excerpts from A Cyborg Manifesto by the feminist Donna Haraway, as well as film stills, photographs of her show and performances in the different exhibition spaces.