Reba Maybury works as an artist, writer, lecturer, and dominatrix, often conjoining these diverse outputs thematically, economically, and materially. Such is the case in Faster Than An Erection, 2021, an installation developed upon invitation by MACRO in Rome and now reconstructed at Simian. Maybury instructed a local submissive man to leave impressions of his body on the floor. These marks become discernible under a series of UV lights hung from the ceiling at the height of the average Danish man’s penis. They serve as proof and reminder of “invisible” male behaviour and these transactions taking place even in the most pedestrian of places. Maybury’s installation reverses the roles of sex work as well as hegemonic labor and gender dynamics and transfers questions of control and power into an institutional context. Stigmatised activities and tabooed practices are exposed to the public eye and likened to other forms of behaviour, whereby society’s unequal moral evaluation is revealed.
Investigation Desk, Summer/Autumn 2024, 2024, consists of evidence and paraphernalia collected during Maybury’s search for an eligible submissive man to use for the installation’s reconstruction. Considering her work as a dominatrix as related to that of a detective, the artist looks at the often absurd ways entitlement and misogyny live in the minutiae of the everyday. Another new work, Room to Grow, 2024, comprises pencil markings on the wall of Simian’s office showing the heights of the men who work there.
at Simian, Copenhagen
until December 15, 2024
