Flowers in the antics

Last Saturday went with my brother to see an installation by Kristian Burford in Chinatown. How long has Chung King Road been gallery row? Chung King Road is not really a road but a promendade and is an egg roll's throw from the Golden Dragon, the chinese restaurant of choice for our family for birthdays, visiting relatives, and death and wedding anniversaries. My brother read a write up in Friday's Calendar about this installation at the Happy Lion gallery. The title of the piece is a page long premise for a short story, the backstory as it were for the installation, the page begins"“Rebecca has returned to the house in which she grew up to convalesce after waking from a coma three months ago. She awoke to discover that her body was paralyzed from the neck down...” From the rest of the text we learn that the particular scene is on a weekend, when her relatives usually visit. Rebecca has been playing a game with her twin 7-year old nieces who are also her godchildren. In this game the girls dress Rebecca up and pose her as their favorite characters, adding dialogue and facial expressions. This particular afternoon the scene is from a photo book of ballet dancers Fonteyn and Nureyev which can be seen opened on the floor of the room. To celebrate their creation they have strewn the scene with flowers, one of the twins has left to try and steal some of her grandfather's roses but gets caught. It's been some time since her niece left, the other twin has inexplicably gone to hide in the closet. Rebecca realizes she's been left in an unseemly position, but she awaits eminent discovery without care. Gallery visitors view the tableau through a hallway door permanently ajar. In the mirror you can see that there's a wheelchair behind the bed. If you didn't read the lengthy title, maybe you'd imagine some romantically erotic episode, there are drinks perched on a bedside table, flowers in her hair and the floor, in lieu of a tutu the twins have made use of a negligé, there's an unmistakable smile on her face. But the viewer knows that it was 7-year old twin girls that posed her, one twin hiding in the closet, having fled presumably in a sudden fit of shame, the other twin seized in the spirit of play off to gather more flowers. What's to be made of all this polymorphous perversity? Prepubescent twins developing a penchant for role-playing, sadism? A grown woman with latent paraphilia, exhibitionism? pedophilia? And shame on us for just standing there gawking, wordlessly, through a barely opened door. I never read any V.C. Andrews, but maybe if I did, it would resonate. If I found the scenario even vaguely tittilating, how would I have perceived this differently? I love that the title is a short story and can imagine this guy being asked to do the windows for Barney's, because if I understand fashion at all, it's deeply psychosexual. I do love watching strangers in intimate actions and moments, picking their noses and smelling their fingers, looking out my window and seeing someone jack off in a car below just before he pulls a right turn. If this is all I took home with me, then fuck me, I'm a happy voyeur.