Artwork: Join or Die by Justine Lai If Join or Die is a call to citizens, I’d rather die than continue with Justine Lai’s mission to paint herself having sex along the presidential timeline.  Aesthetically, she’s got great technique (no pun intended) as an oil painter; other than that, her paintings show no correspondence with the vision of her statement.  Rather, her execution screams paradox in contradicting the aims of her own statement and perpetuating the dominance of a white patriarchy in the United States context. Painting herself with a series of old, dead presidents is a pure fabrication with no political leverage.  Lai wants to render them “the possible object of shame, ridicule and desire...” but there is nothing at stake for these dead presidents.  Their legacy has already been ingrained into the foundation of this country and a few fictitious paintings are not enough to uproot this.  She fails to “demythologize the Presidents” because there are absolutely no indicators or depictions of which “public legacy” she desires to deconstruct.  Sex against a white backdrop displaces the “President” from time and politics—it really just looks like an old white guy having sex with a young Asian woman (what else is new?).  At the same time, she claims to address their private lives, but then is she assuming that all eighteen Presidents illustrated were straight men?  What about the possibility of homosexuality?  This depiction perpetuates the heterosexism in our society and government that marginalizes the LGBTQ community. Justine Lai’s most outrageous claim is that she subverts authority through this intimacy.  On the contrary, she subverts herself to this authority through disturbing images of gender conforming sex roles—the Asian woman is submissive and the old white man is dominant.  She depicts herself being slapped, giving Abe a blow job and even physically silenced where the dead president pins her down, pulls her arms back and covers her mouth.  The positions are predictable as Lai lies down to be the object of their dominance.  If Lai wants to talk about power, patriarchy and politics, I find it strangely interesting that she never mentions the reality of race and gender in her statement. While she believes this is the “most humanizing” thing she can do, her results ironically objectify and exoticize the Asian woman (especially with the white man)—a social condition of our society.  Maybe she’s literally fucking “the Man” in these paintings, but who’s really getting fucked here? TO JOIN THE PARTY, click here: Warning: Parental Consent May be Necessary