If you were to squint very hard, you might recognise one section of the tiny tableau above from last year's VICE Photo Issue. That image, Self-Portrait as Nun with Some of My Mother's Favourite Famous People (in The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs of the "Fiesole San Domenico Altarpiece" by Fra Angelico), is just one piece of a large-scale 5 channel music video, in which more than two hundred of Jamie Warren's friends from Kansas City and beyond harmonise to the tune of a Stevie Wonder song. I don't want to spoil the surprise, but the video piece climaxes with a duet between Warren, dressed in garbage bags as Missy Elliot, and the little demon girl from The Exorcist.
Jaimie Warren's work has been a longtime favourite of VICE. She published a book with Aperture as part of former VICE photo editor Tim Barber's TinyVices. She's also an artist I personally admire. It's not often an artist can be so versatile: Warren makes photographs and videos, does performances and is also co-creator of Whoop Dee Doo, an internationally touring faux-cable access show that she co-directs alongside Matt Roche. Whoop Dee Doo is a nonprofit that partners with local youth organisations to expose kids to all the wonderfully strange things that exist in the world. It's a rare occurrence in the art world to see work that is meaningful, entertaining, humourous and visually compelling at the same time.
Here's an exclusive VICE preview of new work by Jaimie Warren from her second show at The Hole in New York, which opened last night:
Self-portrait as Boy George/Self-Portrait as Ralph Wiggum in Boy George Totally Looks Like Ralph Wiggum by eagles97
Self-portrait as Tuna Turner by food’lebrities
The show includes new additions to Warren's "Celebrities as Food" series, and "TotallyLooksLike.com" series, as well as some bizarre new .gifs.
Jaimie Warren
That's What Friends Are For
April 10 - May 4, 2014
Opening Calebration and Special Performance: April 18th from 6-9PM
Matthew Leifheit is photo editor of VICE. He is also editor-in-chief of MATTE magazine.