Exhibitions

As part of the group exhibition Tie Me Up! Lock Me Down! Special Special hosted a series of performances, “Tie Me Up! Cam Shows,” in collaboration with Wildman Clab. 

“Tie Me Up! Cam Shows” twists internet broadcast culture into an art form, playing with notions of spectatorship and voyeurism. The series consisted of several artist performances inspired by the themes in Tie Me Up! Lock Me Down!, including imagined psychic space, the composite nature of selfhood, and virtual/actual spectatorship. Special Special set up multiple cameras within the space, and the live streamed across Instagram and YouTube.

This was the fifth project in the poetry/performance series The Frontiers Conference, organized by Wildman Clab at Special Special.

Performances:

January 25, 2020

12:00 pm—ASMR Chinese Banquet Mukbang
The Special Special staff and friends consumed 100 dumplings as we celebrated the new year of the rat.

6:00–7:00 pm—Mia Kerin
Mia Kerin performed Number 1, a site-specific piece taking place in the world of Tie Me Up! Lock Me Down!, mediating on the art of being prepared. 

January 26, 2020

4:00–5:00 pm—Kristen Lee
Kristen Lee’s demonstrated shibari, a decorative knot-tying practice associated with erotic bondage. 

6:00–7:00 pm—Taj
Taj’s performance assessed relationships with past lovers while seeking solace in the pleasure found in loving oneself through movement and the luxuriousness of chocolate.

Special Special is pleased to announce Tie Me Up! Lock Me Down!, a group exhibition curated by Banyi Huang and Kristen Lee. The show tells a story of love, heartbreak, and reconciliation. Inspired by the camp of anime, exaggerated narratives in East Asian soap operas, and the baroque, it is an exercise in melodrama.

Tie Me Up! Lock Me Down! features a selection of bodily adornments in the broader sense, including jewelry, garments, and a range of accessories by Angie YooJ Kim, Banyi Huang, Gesualda, Hong Hong Wu, Kristen Lee, Leila Jinnah, Pear Ware, shichuchi, and Use Value, as well as a video piece by Malt Disney.

Special Special transforms into the inner psychic space of an imagined, composite individual, inviting the viewer to be engulfed in unhinged emotions and extreme fantasies. Poised between indulgence and repression, explicit desires and hidden symbolism, she could be any one of us. Here, each wearable piece functions as a performative prop or role-play element, to guide our characters and offer our submission to the binds of love.

Wen-You Cai, founder and director of Special Special, opened her first solo photography exhibition along with a Special Special pop-up at MGM COTAI casino exhibition in October 2019. The exhibition was accompanied by a release of Rooster, Tiger, Sheep by Snake, a photo book featuring photography from the show. 

The photography exhibition is titled Rooster, Tiger, Sheep by Snake, named after the zodiac animals of Wen-You’s father (rooster), mother (tiger), and younger sister (sheep). The exhibition features a collection of 175 photographs, mostly on film, in black and white and color photographs, taken over the span of a decade through travel and jet-lag, at work, on vacation, and at home. The series features, in chronological order, the mundane and momentous occasions of her family, with her sister, Wenhao, as a marker of time as she grows up in the images. The series follows each distinct personality living between harmony and discord through moments of play, and occasional ennui, and investigates Wen-You’s spectrum of emotions (as snake) toward her intimately portrayed subjects.

Wen-You was born in 1989 in Tokyo, Japan, and has been based in New York City since 1995. She received a BFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design (2012), and an MA in Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship from Goldsmiths College, University of London (2016).

During the exhibition CHKRA created by sound artist Tsung, Special Special hosted the event Tea CHRKRA in collaboration with Timothy Hsu from Chinatown Soup.

Tea CHKRA was a tea-tasting designed to heighten the CHKRA sound meditation experience. The experience was inspired by the Seven Bowls ritual, in which seven bowls of tea are brewed and consumed using the same tea leaves, activating the energy of the seven chakras.


About Chinatown Soup

Chinatown Soup is a creative community advancing art, justice, historic preservation, and civic engagement in downtown New York.

About Timothy Hsu

Timothy Hsu founded The Mandarin’s Tea Room in 2004 as a quest for the most select Chinese teas. This journey introduced him to the plants, farmers, and teachers of an ancient tradition.