Quickie with Puppies Puppies
Extremely visible artist has an enormous Hello Kitty collection
At a time when identity politics seem to be going out of fashion, artist Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo — better known as Puppies Puppies — is identitymaxxing. For more than a decade she’s gone all-out, filling gallery spaces around the world with what others might see as clichés from Grindr masks to trans flags, stenciling the words “TRANNY” and “SHEMALE” on gallery walls, and performing as the Statue of Liberty or even Spongebob Squarepants. This weekend, her latest show ‘Kleidung’ takes over Galerie Kandlhofer for Vienna’s gallery festival. Art writer and trans intellectualite P. Eldridge says, ‘Looking across her practice, I find myself thinking less about identity than about circulation: how meanings move between bodies, images, fantasies, and public life.’ Naturally, P. checked in for a quickie. Let’s go!
P. Eldridge: The name Puppies Puppies has always fascinated me — it’s somewhere between an artist’s name and a character. What things has Puppies Puppies done that Jade Kuriki-Olivo couldn’t?
Jade: The pseudonym has been with me for 14-15 years, so it’s all interchangeable. Sometimes I wish I could piece back the mystery. It can be freeing to make work as a spirit-slash-void, but I’m still scared to make videos on social media. I’m like, ‘How much do you put out there?’ I overthink everything. I look back and delete things constantly and can’t really accept that’s how I felt in the moment. I wish I made money streaming every second of my life, 24/7. It’s the extreme I’m interested in: eat, shit, fuck for the infinite audience.
Eat, shit, fuck, repeat…
I long for a moment where I can put things out into the world without a person being attached to it.
But then your work often begins with something that already seems to belong to everyone — a monument or a celebrity — and somehow ends in a more intimate place.
Yeah, I have a number of bronze sculptures out there of me standing naked on a plinth that says “woman”. A lot of people can’t accept seeing a penis and thinking those genitals could ever be attached to a woman.
I often get the feeling that you are liberating things from their so-called “official” definitions.
One piece of mine that still sticks with me is called ‘Forever 21’. I blew my last breath into a plastic shopping bag from that brand before turning 22. At the time I hadn’t transitioned yet, so seeing that work now as a trans woman, as a woman, I see how society dissects the femmes down to the T… Thinking women aren’t desirable after a certain age, treating aging in women and femmes as a curse, that forces you to the side very early in life.
For years now, your work touches upon systems that classify people, like medicine, bureaucracy and museums. What have you learned about power by performing it?
That no one wants to give up their power and privilege, even if they agree that marginalized populations should have more say, participation, and power themselves in whatever conversation is at hand.
Do you feel more understood now that you are more visible as an artist?
I mean, I’m grateful for other trans artists who don’t feel like they have to address their identity in their work. But I go to the extreme with visibility because I’m speaking to a long history of how society desperately wanted us to be invisible. When you look back, you don’t see openly trans women in a lot of placesss. Don’t tell us we’re getting our moment, nooope! The equity is NOT there!! If I put myself out there for art institutions, I know that they won’t care about my well-being… So I have to remind myself, like, ‘Jade, you better do this for yourself and people like you, because these places don’t care about your safety.’
A lot of your work features readymades, are there any objects that have a lot of meaning in your own life?
I have a giant, mostly Hello Kitty stuffed animal collection. I feel like they’re deeply sad. I find myself wishing I knew how to give them fulfilling lives — they don’t have meds or anything to get by, it’s this eternal boredom. Thinking about them fucks me up!
Do you think ambiguity is a destination or a condition?
Ambiguity is a symptom of being alive. I want it all to have a resolution, but that’s generally death, and even then the conclusion is questionable…spiritually.
What part of yourself have you most successfully hidden in plain sight?
It’s weird, I want so badly to be transparent but no matter what you’re transparent about something is always going to be hidden. Yes, I’ll expose my whole body, hole tits ass clit-slash-dick. It’s all there. But parts of me are hidden, as a human, as a person with a complex personality, with maybe a personality complex lol.
Okay, so how would you describe yourself then?
In the end, I’m this highly medicated bi polar lil weirdo — some people tell me I’m funny. Definitely some kind of autism, emotionally damaged transsexual, desperately wanting to deeply connect with others…unless I’m totally in non-verbal mode watching endless TV, hoping I forget about my problems or something sticks out as a form for art. That description of myself seems unnecessary but I’ll leave it there.
Do you feel misunderstood?
Some people think I’m not someone to take seriously. People gag when they realize I’ve got a brain.
What’s a certainty you’ve lost that you’re grateful to have lost?
That other people will protect me. Often in the depths of sadness and pain, I wish for someone to save me. But then I remind myself, ‘Jade, no one’s here to protect you, it’s time to protect your goddamn self.’