Contemporary Art Baddie Paradox

Acknowledging that is more profitable for Advertisers (and Universities offering Curation MFAs) to encourage us to edge ourselves to our publicised interpretations of each other, the Hollywood Superstar believes, senso generis, in the need for more irl fucking.

So let's hear from an archetype on the problem: the un-fucked 'Contemporary Art Baddie', who suggests that the way to reconcile your feelings with the hot new bods in the gallery with the hot new works on display is to make the whole space less sterile. Riffing on Andrea Fraser's fields of contemporary art diagrams, C.A.B creates a map of the girls that keep the world running.

This is the first in a series on love and exhibition, so get pitching... and bear in mind: the Superstar likes to debate but she also likes to say: Fuck you and your trad wife.

The Baddie Paradox by Contemporary Art Baddie

After the sudden resurrection of my “love” for art in the years post-academy, I’ve found myself in a sexual rut. I am stimulated by the colours, shapes and concepts that present themselves to me in exhibition spaces. I visit artist run galleries, big and thick institutes, tight little spaces, commercial spaces, non profits, churches and more… But everywhere those plain white walls. Guys, get a grip - where is the fun in all of this? The white cube has no sex appeal, it’s sterility doesn’t necessarily create the right ambiance to ask for the new gallery kid's number (we’ve been making sober eye contact for the past 30 minutes) Or is it just me? The “Contemporary Art Baddie” status that intimidates men into not talking to me at openings? At this point, there are only curators in my DMs. And yes, they are there to work.

At my lash-tech appointment, I thought of Elke Krystufek’s 1994 Masturbating in Kunsthalle Vienna. Then Andrea Fraser’s Untitled (2003), a commissioned work where she videotaped herself having sex with an art collector. He paid for the videotape as an artwork, not for the sex itself. Both works stage the paradox of sexual performance, vital acts are sterilised in the presence of the institution, the commerce and the recording.

Elle Krystufek (Top) Andrea Fraser (Bottom

And that’s the core of The Baddie Paradox:

• High visibility, low approachability: Desired, but rarely approached.
• Sexual aura ≠ sexual access: Style, confidence, and self-possession read as sex, but aren’t the same as sex itself.
• The Madonna–Whore complex still lingers. Baddies are often fantasised about but not pursued sincerely.
• Power dynamics. Owning your space shifts desire: some fetishise it, others retreat.
So is it just me, or are all girls in the arts fucking - except the Contemporary Art Baddie? Or maybe that’s the paradox: she is fucking, but what she really wants is intimacy. Sexual aura does not mean sexual access, and neither guarantees intimacy.

Bruno Zhu and Meme on Hoes

Inspired by Andrea Fraser’s The Field of Contemporary Art: A Diagram, I developed a 4-Venn diagram to grasp not just the art world but the girls who keep it running: the Indie Literature Hottie, the Gallerina, the Art Hoe, the Community Artist - and, of course, the Contemporary Art Baddie, who encompasses them all. What are they moved by? Their motives? Overlaps? And importantly, do they fuck?

baddie_vendiagram-1.pdf