Art by Carmen Vintro
I’m struggling to remember the last time I stared so intently at a human body covered by nothing but a gallon of baby oil and a pair of blue Versace briefs – at least in a professional setting. But this was the crowning feature of the Fitzwilliam’s Late Night in October, as the museum welcomed artist and bodybuilder Jake Wood into conversation with Dr Diarmuid Hester (cultural historian, activist, and author at Emmanuel College) to discuss Wood’s latest performance art piece, ‘Jake Wood x Paris 1924’.
We began by watching the video with sound. Wood moves through the Paris 1924 exhibition, bringing their body into dialogue with the art through poses and visual effects. The soundscape is marked by staccato inhalations and ethereal electronic music. New shadows fall on established artwork like Marsden Hatley’s ‘The Strong Man’ and Robert Delaunay’s ‘The Runners,’ and the shots become increasingly fantastical, culminating in a crescendo of posturing in which Wood’s performance is overlaid onto close ups of the genitalia of miscellaneous Greek statues. The beautiful, hard, idealising male body is subject and object throughout.
And somehow, I found the first watch devastating. The sense of absence in Wood’s smile and the control exhibited in every breath seemed to hold such a gravity of constraint that I responded to their body’s inhibition with my own shock. Yet, like everybody else in the audience, I gawped on, stunned by my own voyeurism. The piece held within it all the choices which had to be made when fashioning a physique of that nature: the food consumed and not consumed, the information considered, the microanalysis undertaken, the sacrifices made and the delights experienced. I thought about my relationship with my own body, and the deep pleasures and pains I feel in my attention to its composition, and felt lonely.
Then we watched the piece again on a loop, this time narrated by the artist. And slowly I began to imagine the sensation felt by the first Brit to witness a Waltz. Confused, ashamed, and excited, I recognised that some of my shock had come from having experienced a new body paradigm, an absolutely new way of the body existing in a space. The quality of the performance is in its ballet of concealment and exposure, and the naturalisation of the taboo through engagement with a range of art forms.
The loop continued for five or six further iterations. Jake spoke about their key thoughts when creating art, which ranged from embodying ‘Muscle Mary’ – the 20th century figure of the muscular gay man – in their exploration of their own queerness to forms of worship and the Kentish countryside. The discussion turned to the troubling sense that, as a professional bodybuilder, the artist is challenging the idea of a perfect male form while embodying it. But neither the bodybuilder nor the artist could really resolve the tension between these identities, and Jake spoke instead to the comedy of their coexistence. In this way, they finished by talking about the value of silliness in both spheres, and the humour inherent in their Paris 1924 performance and wider work. And I realised then that there was something really rather playful about the entire dance: the baby oil, the drama, the penises. In this way, the performance turned the body into a site and source of laughter as much as of reflection, and it left me looking for irreverence in my own embodiment.
More of Jake Wood’s art can be found at https://jakewoodartist.co.uk/.
By Ollie Jakes
The Camera 