Sunday October 29, 2-5pm
Marni Kotak: “Ajax’s Spooktacular 6th Birthday Party”
Performance / Party
Please RSVP to rsvp@microscopegallery.com for location info
Image courtesy of Marni Kotak
As part of the ongoing “Raising Baby X” project by Marni Kotak, the artist invites the public to join her in the annual birthday party and performance celebrating her son Ajax’s 6th birthday, “Ajax’s Spooktacular 6th Birthday Party”, held for the first time in the family’s home.
As Ajax is increasingly involved in the planning of his birthday parties, he has chosen like last year to be a Halloween-themed birthday party where the participants are encouraged to wear costumes. The home will be decorated as a haunted house with ghoulish surprises throughout. Food, cake and refreshments will be served and weather permitting, there will be also be a backyard barbecue, with s’mores. There will also be a jack-o-lantern piñata, a fortune teller, and spooky games for kids.
Kotak views the birthday party as our culture’s quintessential celebration of life. Past parties have included “First Birthday”, incorporating a marching band and a giant pop out cake; “Year 2: Ajax’s Singing in the Rain”, complete with umbrellas and an artificial downpour; “Year 3: Cool Car Cut”, first haircut in a sports car barber’s chair to the accompaniment of a Beatles’ cover band; “Year 4: Ajax’s Silly Spooky House of Mirrors”, a mad maze of fun mirrors and a magician with crazy tricks; and “Year 5: My Halloween Birthday Party”, the first year that Ajax helped in the creation of the party decorations, including large-scale cardboard trees, light up ghosts and tiny hanging bats.
With “Raising Baby X” the artist positions the act of motherhood within the context of her wider body of work considering everyday life as art and its rituals, accomplishments and achievements as personal triumphs to be shared and celebrated.
Please RSVP to rsvp@microscopegallery.com to receive location information.
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Marni Kotak is a performance artist who makes multimedia works in which she presents her everyday life being lived. Her most recent solo exhibition “Treehouse” (2017) was response to a devastating fire in the family’s home. Other solo exhibitions at the gallery include “Mad Meds” (2014) during which the artist gradually withdrew from psychiatric medications prescribed for postpartum depression and her 2011 “The Birth of Baby X”, where she gave birth to her son as a live performance at the gallery during a month-long exhibition. Kotak’s other “Found Performances”, or works based on daily activities, experiences, or accomplishments, include “Self-Medication” (2014), “Calorie Countdown” (2013), “Raising Baby X” (ongoing), “Postpartum Depression” (2012), and staged re-enactments of her own birth, attending her grandfather’s funeral and losing her virginity in a blue Plymouth. Kotak’s works have been reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, Blouin Artinfo, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic and others. They have also entered a broader discourse in publications including Time, Los Angeles Times, The Times of London, Vice, The Huffington Post, Salon, and numerous others. Kotak was a recipient of a Franklin Furnace Grant (2012-2013) and has received grants from NYSCA/BAC. Public collections include the Library of Congress, Washington DC and Rhizome, NY. Kodak received a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Brooklyn College. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
