Dzine: “I wanted to create this intimate setting and recreate particular memories that I had growing up. The whole project is about social interaction. It is one part performance and one part installation. We opened it in New York at the New Museum and at Salon 94. In order to kind of keep true to the language of my studio practice and what the project was about, the whole nexus of the idea was that my mother had a bootleg beauty salon when I was growing up. I would hang out with her and the ladies in the house and clean up the hair and you know hang out with them while they were gossiping and watching soaps—that whole salon culture. I felt that I needed to reproduce that experience I had as a child. So I transplanted the living room and brought it here. It is actually my parents’ living room. I mean it is all exactly how I removed it.”

“My stuff is really iced—out, I brought these nail techs into my studio and I didn’t realize there was a name for what I was doing, it’s called snow-globing. The beauty aspect of it all makes the experience cross over into pop culture. The book and the installation have this historical connection with Egyptian nails up to everything that is going on now. It was hard to find information on the history of nail culture, which is how the book came about. I have had requests to take this and to collaborate and commercialize it somehow but I would like to keep it in an installation like setting, which is what keeps the integrity of the work for me.”

Photos by: Aimee Blaut

Tags: Art Basel, Culture, Dzine, History, Installation, Nail Art, Societe Perrier, Standard Miami Beach, Standard Press