College of Art + Art History alumna, Rose Romero, recently brought her mobile art exhibition and functioning nail salon, Porn Nail$, to The Nerve, a performance art festival in Fort Lauderdale. The Nerve features work meant to unsettle audiences and push the boundaries of traditional art. With its feminine excess, vulgar conversations, and what Romero describes as “ghetto raunch,” Porn Nail$ certainly fulfills these requirements.
When Romero first heard about The Nerve, she felt that Porn Nail$ would be a great fit. The mobile installation uses Judith Butler’s concept of performativity to deconstruct gender and racial stereotypes in order to reclaim a radical female sexuality. Porn Nail$ utilizes flamboyant outfits, wacky salon décor, gaudy jewelry, Santeria candles, love spells, hexes and other items drawing from camp and kitsch aesthetics. Romero herself exemplifies these aesthetics in the characters she plays as a nail artist, using female drag and camp performances of the Miami Chonga to construct these self-described tawdry alter-egos. Romero aims to explore her political concerns through the use of performance and the appropriation of beauty-spa and nail salon rituals.
“I like to deconstruct and play with identity,” says Romero. “I use my character to promote radical chusmeria and Chonga values – being too loud, too sexual, too queer – as a form of feminist resistance to cultural hegemony.”
Romero draws on the discourse of post-porn and Third Wave feminism. Porn Nail$ interrogates ideas of gender and race by exploring the ways in which nail art functions as a code of exotic otherness, using flamboyant color and feminine excess to examine constructions of Latin female identity.
Romero says that responses to Porn Nail$ vary, but the most common is laughter at the excessive and gaudy décor of the nail salon as well as the name of the art piece itself. However, many audience members and participants gain therapeutic value from their exchange with Romero’s alter-egos.
“I’ve had participants tell me that they felt emotionally transformed – finding joy, inner peace, acceptance and empathy,” says Romero. “It’s a piece where the participant and the artist share a moment of trust, intimacy and friendship through the healing power of gossip, laughter and touch.”
She also enjoys when audience members partake in role-play and begin acting out characters with her, noting the necessity of total immersion , participation and social interaction to the creation and meaning of Porn Nail$.
“It opens up a critical space where we can poke fun at gender conventions and rituals through mimesis,” says Romero.
Romero hopes that Porn Nail$ will lead its audiences and participants to rethink concepts of gender and race but will also ultimately provide empathy and comfort.
“To fully understand the piece, the viewer has to undergo a transformative experience,” says Romero. “That’s what I find boundary-pushing and unnerving about this on-going project.”
