Bianca Censori on BIO POP, her new show about ‘objectification’

At 6.30am last Thursday, December 11, I clicked the livestream for Bianca Censori’s debut exhibition and performance in Seoul, BIO POP. What immediately popped up was Censori herself, in a full red latex bodysuit, tinkering around and “baking” a cake in an all-metal kitchen. She eventually wheeled her concoction, covered in a red cloche, to the other side of the room. There, a curtain was pulled back to reveal a dining room scene, filled with masked women restrained inside medical crutch furniture, designed by Censori and produced by Ted Lawson. “The cake, baked in performance and carried to the table, is not nourishment but offering,” reads her artist statement. “It embodies the tension of the kitchen as origin, labour and ritual: a gesture of domestic service reframed as spectacle.” At first glance, the masked women in BIO POP looked like wax figures, until you realise they are performers dressed in nude latex, designed by KidO Shigenari to resemble Censori herself.

The designer and wife of Kanye West has become somewhat of a controversial figure. Despite sparking uproar on multiple occasions for her very nearly nude style of dressing, Censori lets any backlash play out. Is it performance art or exhibitionism? Is she in control, or being robbed of her agency? Why do we care? These are the exact type of discussions the Australian-born, academically trained architect is looking to provoke through her formal introduction into the art world.

BIO POP meditates on themes of objectification, domesticity and womanhood, offering a self-portrait in constraint. “Domesticity is the mother of all revolutions, because all others trace back to it,” the BIO POP statement reads. “Born in the domestic, the home moulds the body, the spirit and its roles. Positions learned in private are worn in public.” It’s all just vague enough to get people talking, and they are: some say it’s a regurgitation of Anna Udenberg’s work or Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen. (The prosthetic-style pieces are very similar to Udenbergs.) 

It’s clear Censori isn’t the first to explore concepts of womanhood in the kitchen (shock), or even the body in the context of the medical device. So perhaps the most interesting element about her exploring how the “ritualistic tendencies of the domestic establish the basis for our public personas” is that people are already curious about what Censori’s own line is between humiliation and performance, control and objectification. It’s a conversation she wants to continue: BIO POP was simply the origin point in a seven-part series to come over the next seven years – an apparent “cycle” of reliquaries, confessions, sacrifices and rebirths. 

But it’s not exactly a conversation she’ll address directly. We asked Censori about BIO POP, and she answered the questions abruptly, in third-person as a proxy “Bianca”.

Tell me more about the name. What does BIO POP mean?

Bianca: BIO refers to the body. POP refers to culture. BIO POP is where biology meets spectacle. 

Why did you choose the kitchen as the origin point for this exploration of womanhood?

Bianca: Because it’s where care, labour and expectation intersect first.

The contortionists were wearing masks. And all of the bodysuits (including yours) had a plastic shine to them. Could you tell me about the intention behind the materials?

Bianca: They remove specificity. They turn the body into a surface people can mirror themselves, if they choose to.

You were wearing red, with a red cloche covering your plate. Why this colour?

Bianca: Red signals offering, exposure and consumption.

BIO POP marks your formal introduction into the art world. Do you see it as a shift or a continuation in your career so far? 

Bianca: A continuation. The work has existed – it’s just formal now.

The performance explores how the “ritualistic tendencies of the domestic” establish the basis for our public personas. How much of your own public persona is inspired by these ritualistic tendencies?

Bianca: Bianca uses herself as a symbol. The work exposes what resonates in other people’s psyches.

Why was Seoul, South Korea, chosen as the location for the debut of BIOPOP?

Bianca: Korea understands ritual, performance and futurism as one system. 

Why now?

Bianca: Art takes a long time.

This will be the first chapter in a seven-part series. What are you hoping to achieve or explore through this seven-year body of work? 

Bianca: The cycle tracks lived time – how objects, rituals and culture accumulate meaning collectively.