Black Pussy

[Wilson Gray]

Okay. But why specifically *black* pussy?

-Wilson Gray

On 9/22/05, neil <neil at typog.co.uk> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       neil <neil at TYPOG.CO.UK>
> Subject:      Black Pussy
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Just opened at the new Hauser & Wirth Gallery (a former bank) in London's
> Piccadilly, is an exhibition by LA artist Jason Roades titled 'Black
> Pussy... and the Pagan idol Workshop'.
>
> Adrian Searle, reviewing it in Tuesday's Guardian G2 observes:
>
> "The Black Pussy of the title has nothing whatever to do with cats. It is
> the vagina by anything other than its proper name: sprangalang, jelly roll,
> the choo-choo train and many other ribald, ridiculous, affectionate, obscene
> and offensive names, written in ultra-violet neon, an eerie black light that
> makes your teeth fluoresce and your dandruff sparkle.
>
> The 427 pussy-words (selected from a much longer though by no means
> exhaustive list) are hung and dangled like so many Christmas tree baubles
> about a mountainous accumulation of stuff.
>
> The words themselves are a philologist's wet dream of gangsta rap, hip-hop,
> Creole, African and street jive euphemisms. Alone, these darkly shimmering
> signs would be no more than a mildly entertaining, if ultimately depressing
> record of the male mind-set. No one uses the word vagina in workaday
> intimate speech. But in the context of a work that also draws its
> inspiration -- if that is the word -- from the idols that were once housed
> in the Ka'bah in Mecca, before Muhammad cleared them out, their presence
> here gives one pause."
>
> --Neil Crawford
>


--
-Wilson Gray