“Before and After, What the Witch’s Nose Knows that Andy Warhol’s Nose Doesn’t Know”

Saturday, May 6 from 3 - 6 PM

A.I.R. Gallery 155 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201

“Before and After” is Part 6 of an ongoing performance and writing project, created by Kay Turner and begun in 2012, with a lecture performance series on fairy-tale witches at A.I.R Gallery in Brooklyn. Turner’s What a Witch series expands witch pedagogy to include witch embodiment performativity. Her performances expose the witch’s negative, abject history as fabricated by men and use communal ritual to reverse its effects.

“Before and After” was first performed by Turner at A.I.R. in 2017. Zini Lardieri collaborated with Turner to create photo documentation of Turner’s ritual through which participants embrace the power of the Witch’s Nose and through this embrace reverse its negative connotations. In 2021, they made an artist book collecting some of the nose portraits made by Lardieri during the performance.

Lardieri and Turner see these photographs as an ongoing cumulative portrait project and a “Wall of Witches” will be included in Lardieri’s solo show ,which opens on April 22, 2023 and closes on May 21, 2023.

On May 6, 2023 Turner will reprise portions of her 2017 “Before and After, What the Witch’s Nose Knows” performance and initiate new witch nose takers into the coven of reversed effects. Lardieri will document this transformation and the new portraits will be printed and added to the show the following week. The Witch Portrait Booth will be open from 3-4, there will be a peformance at 4, and the portrait booth will be open again from 5-6.