My Epidemic (Small Bad Blood Opera)

Lili Reynaud Dewar
Born in La Rochelle, France, in 1975.
She lives and works in Grenoble, France.

Free spirit of the French artistic scene, Lili Reynaud Dewar has become well established during the past several years. In 2009, she cofounded the feminist journal Pétunia with Dorothee Dupuis and Valerie Chartrain; in 2011, she initiated the experimental school Baba with a group of Paris- based artists; and in 2014, with artist Benjamin Valenza, she initiated Performance Proletarians!!! Join Us!, a broadcast channel dedicated to streaming live performances over the Internet. Influenced by literature, cinema, music, and poetry, and by the mythical or underground figures of the counterculture (Sun Ra, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Josephine Baker, Guillaume Gustan), her work takes the form of film, installation, sculpture, and text, and examines both near and distant cultural signs and symbols.
Performance is at the center of Lili Reynaud Dewar’s work. Whether she performs or whether she invites students, performers, or musicians to take over her exhibition space, she unfolds variations on a theme. In 2012, during her show at the Magasin—Centre national d’art contemporain de Grenoble, Reynaud Dewar began to perform onstage herself, dancing naked, her body painted. Images of the famous choreography of Josephine Baker were hung in the art center just before her show opened to the public. Since that time, she has reenacted this ritual in the many locations that inspire her (museums, galleries, other public spaces). For the Biennale di Venezia’s All the World’s Futures, she combines for the first time a number of videos of these performances with a new work based on the argument that opposed French writer Guillaume Dustan and Act-Up France leader Didier Lestrade over the question of unprotected sex and personal responsibility. Dustan was violently and relentlessly attacked by Act-Up for publicly taking a position for barebacking and for asserting the freedom of HIV positive individuals to have unprotected sexual relations with one another. Their dispute escalated to such an extent that Dustan was ultimately expelled from the public debate on this crucial question and moved away from Paris in order to escape public persecution and criticism. This story, which can be considered an exemplary dispute of the early 2000s, attracted the attention of Reynaud Dewar, who refers to these events as a Tale of Sperm, Love and Morals. It also brought into question what can be addressed in a public context.
Her new piece The Small Modest Bad Blood Opera takes the form of a sculptural installation incorporating music and lyrics. The sung texts oppose a group to an individual who exchange antagonistic views on the subjects of prophylaxis, responsibility, freedom, sexuality, and activism. Reynaud Dewar has involved her students in the production of this work: they will sing one of the parts in the opera.