Saturday, October 23, 2021, 2-5pm
Marni Kotak: Happy 10th Birthday, Peacock Racer!
(Baby X Turns 10)
Outside Artist’s home
RSVP to rsvp@microscopegallery.com to attend
(Raindate Sunday October 24, 2-5pm)
Microscope Gallery and Marni Kotak are pleased to present Happy 10th Birthday, Peacock Racer! a live birthday party performance event to celebrate the 10th birthday of Ajax Kotak Bell, who was born on October 25, 2011 at the gallery’s original Bushwick location on 4 Charles Place, Bushwick, Brooklyn as part of the performance installation exhibition “The Birth of Baby X.”
Kotak invites family, friends, and the general public to join her and Ajax for the birthday festivities, which will include elaborate tracks for Hot Wheels cars designed by Ajax, a peacock balloon arch installation, vegan lunch, and cupcakes, and a Halloween pinata. Ajax will be dressed as “The Peacock King,” in a costume that he has made for himself from cardboard, paper mache, feathers, and fabric. And Kotak will be dressed as pea-hen with her own hand-made costume. The event will be held outdoors in front of Kotak’s Bushwick home to make accommodations for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. All are encouraged to come in costume.
Happy 10th Birthday, Peacock Racer! is the final event in a series of ten birthday party performances over the past decade held as part of Kotak’s wider Raising Baby X project in which she re-contextualizes the raising of her son Ajax as performance art. Ajax’s First Birthday, which featured a magician/clown popping out of a giant cake, various games, and a marching band took place at Microscope Gallery in October 2012. Subsequent parties were held annually, at various art spaces or at the artist’s home, depending on the preference of her son. Each has focused on a theme particularly interesting to Ajax that year, such as “Singin’ Rain” (Year 2), “Coolcar Cut” (Year 3), “Ajax’s Silly Spooky House of Mirrors” (Year 4), “Disco Dinosaur” (Year 8).
Kotak and her son have agreed that while this is to be the last public birthday party/performance, other elements of the Raising Baby X project will continue, including at her son’s request, those related to the Raising Baby X: Little Brother project in which Ajax wears a point-of-view camera to capture moments from his childhood from his own perspective.
Kotak views “Raising Baby X” as central to her wider body of work, considering everyday life as art and its rituals, accomplishments and achievements as personal triumphs to be shared and celebrated. The long-term project has evolved in recent years to a collaboration between mother and son.
To attend please RSVP to Microscope Gallery at rsvp@microscopegallery.com. Please note that in the case of rain the event will take place on Sunday October 24, 2 -5pm.
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Marni Kotak is a multimedia and performance artist presenting everyday life being lived. She has received international attention for her durational performances and exhibitions, most notably “The Birth of Baby X” (2011) in which she gave birth to her son as a live performance and “Mad Meds” (2014) during which the artist slowly withdrew from psychiatric medications prescribed for postpartum depression. In “Treehouse” (2017), Kotak — who had just experienced a devastating fire in her home — created a refuge for herself and others to pause from the overwhelming aspects of life. For “Dancing in the Oval Office” (2019), the artist invited the public to join her in her version of the oval office to dance for a more open, inclusive, and peaceful society. Kotak’s sixth solo exhibition at Microscope Gallery will take place in the Spring of 2022.
Kotak’s works have also appeared at the Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago, Chile, Artists Space, Exit Art, Momenta Art, English Kills Gallery, Grace Exhibition Space, among many others. She has performed extensively in the US and abroad. Kotak’s work appears in “The Art of Feminism: Images that shaped the Fight for Equality”, 1957-2017 by Helena Reckitt (Chronicle Books, 2018) and “Blackwells Companion to Contemporary Art: A Companion to Feminist Art “(2019) among other publications. Grants include Franklin Furnace Fund Award and the Brooklyn Arts Council among others. Marni Kotak received a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Brooklyn College.