Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo): Nothing New

Installation photograph, Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo): Nothing New, The New Museum, October 12, 2023, through March 3, 2024, photo © The New Museum

The New Museum presents the first New York  solo exhibition of conceptual and performance artist Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo (b. 1989, Dallas,  Texas), widely known by the moniker Puppies Puppies. On view through  March 3, 2024, “Nothing New” transforms the New Museum’s glass-walled Lobby Gallery into a  mise-en-scène for Kuriki-Olivo’s daily life, with a portion of the space functioning as a duplicate  of the artist’s actual bedroom. Using a fogging glass mechanism, Puppies Puppies will  alternately obscure and reveal her activities in the gallery to visitors, foregrounding themes of  visibility, representation, and cultural consumption. 

Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo), Plague, 2019. Installation view from Halle für Kunst Lüneburg. Courtesy the artist, Halle fur Kunst, Luneburg and Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles. Photo: Fred Dott

 Kuriki-Olivo expands on contemporary ideas around the readymade by imbuing ubiquitous and  everyday objects, signifiers, and actions with a personal and political charge. She has, for  example, reconfigured antibacterial gel dispensers, toilet bowl liquid, and the color green—as well as the acts of sleeping, peeing, and taking a pill—in installations and performances that  question ableist frameworks of artistic and capitalist production. Many of Puppies Puppies’  exhibitions have also included actionable components: a GoFundMe to support a friend’s  transition fund; free HIV testing and counseling; a working shower available for use by the public. Kuriki-Olivo thus asserts that life can be viewed as its own form of endurance practice,  especially for those whose very survival is at stake, including trans, nonbinary, and gender- nonconforming people of color. 

Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo), Barriers (Stanchions), 2017. Installation view: T293, Rome. Courtesy the artist, T293, Rome and Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles

Much of Puppies Puppies’ past work has also centered around a refusal to be seen. She has  used proxies to speak or act on her behalf during studio visits, interviews, and performances;  donned costumes that function as avatars, dressing as SpongeBob, a Minion, Gollum, Freddy  Krueger, and Lady Liberty; and staged performances in absentia. “Nothing New” marks an  important shift in the artist’s practice, exploring new registers of transparency and obfuscation  by inviting visitors to experience Kuriki-Olivo’s life as if through a screen.  

Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo), MRI scans from having a brain tumor removed in 2010 (documents from having brain cancer), 2010–2021. MRI Scans. Installation View: Kunsthaus Glarus. Courtesy the artist, Kunsthaus, Glarus, and Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles. Photo: CE

 
Cameras will film the artist as she navigates between the New Museum, her Lower East Side  apartment, and her day-to-day life in the city, with live footage broadcast onto monitors at the  Museum. By engaging with contemporary modes of surveillance in both their self-enacted and nonconsensual manifestations, Puppies Puppies blurs the boundaries between her public and  private life while also destabilizing the distinctions between URL and IRL existence. Using the  heightened setting of the museum space, “Nothing New” considers how camming, chatrooms, social media, and other forms of online surveillance and display can be tools of connection and  survival that also risk producing new forms of exploitation and control. “Nothing New” thus  establishes a reflection on the art world's power dynamics and financial structures and the ways in which they mirror those of sex work, as well as other modes of connection that emerge via  the internet and in real life. 

Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo), Public shower (shower is available to be used), 2016. Performance, shower (public shower participant). Image courtesy the artist, Kunsthaus, Glarus, and Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles. Photo: Stefan Burger

Visible through the glass wall of the Lobby Gallery, a reproduction of Kuriki-Olivo’s bedroom will  be flanked by two additional vignettes revealing aspects of her familial heritage and interior  world. On one side, a Torii gate and a scaled-down recreation of the garden at Ryōan-ji Temple in Kyoto delineate the entrance into a sacred space. On the other, MRI scans of the artist’s  brain accompany a small hemp growing station relating to her use of CBD to prevent seizures  during treatment and recovery from a brain tumor, as well as the broader mental health benefits of regular cannabis use for, in her words, “a trans woman navigating this world.” By allowing a  spectacularized view into her daily existence and elements of her personal history, Kuriki-Olivo  asserts the nuanced layers of her own identity, eliding tokenization and reductive narratives of  racial and trans identities. 
 

Installation photograph, Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo): Nothing New, The New Museum, October 12, 2023, through March 3, 2024, photo © The New Museum

“Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo): Nothing New” is curated by Vivian Crockett,  Curator, with Ian Wallace, Curatorial Assistant.

SUPPORT 

Lead support for “Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo): Nothing New” is provided by Christina Hribar.
 
Support for this exhibition is provided by the Toby Devan Lewis Emerging Artists Exhibitions  Fund.
 
Artist commissions are generously supported by the Neeson / Edlis Artist Commissions Fund.
 
Generous support is provided by the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte.
 
Additional support is provided by the Morton Neumann Family Foundation, Dillon Callie Cohen,  R F Jefferies, and Tiffany Zabludowicz.
 
We gratefully acknowledge the Producers Council of the New Museum.
 
Special thanks to the Artemis Council of the New Museum. 
 
Thanks to Balice Hertling Galerie, Paris.

*Please note, the full exhibition title for the Kunsthaus Glarus exhibition is as follows: I’m Jade. I’m a trans woman trans womxn trans femme two spirit human being. Life feels long even though it hasn’t been all that long. A brain tumor surgically removed, getting divorced, losing my dad, brain tumor resurgence scare, starting hormone replacement therapy, experiencing sexual assault and rape multiple times and coming out as a woman. This exhibition is a roller coaster of the emotions feelings but also thoughts connections that happened over this span of time... only a little more than a decade. This exhibition covers the span of Puppies Puppies to Jade. It’s hard to get up each morning. My heart aches but I’m happy to be a woman. I’ll try my best to enjoy life even though society makes it difficult. From dust to dust I am but a speck on this planet and I wonder how to use this short life of mine. Trying not to let my trauma take over but still be kind to yourself Jade. This is the end of a decade • a new way of working coming soon. Sincerely, Jade Kuriki Olivo

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