Review
Anya Liftig
Human Resources
410 Cottage Home St
Los Angeles, CA
April 5th, 2016
Janky Charm
The Human Resources Gallery in the heart of Los Angeles’ Chinatown couldn’t be cooler. Casually nestled in between old Chinese restaurants and industrial factory warehouses, this large gallery space feels like home for hip, young artists. Surrounded by a couple of key Chinatown tropes including rows of red paper lanterns and the Bruce Lee statue, the Human Resources Gallery oozes that corny, janky, nostalgic Los Angeles charm.
Janky charm is an accurate description for Anya Liftig’s performance. Pie is served from a single person sized bakery next to a solitary camping tent placed in the center of the room. After the audience got settled with their pie and Budweiser, Liftig began telling an autobiographical narrative while sitting in the opaque tent. The audience couldn’t see her clearly but her presence was known.
That nostalgic feeling hit me while she was describing her run down basement apartment in Brooklyn and her experience of being a broke city dweller surrounded by not-so-broke city dwellers. Most of her audience seemed to relate to her struggles of DIY plumbing jobs and the overwhelming feeling of failure. Her story was cynical, sarcastic, romantic, haunting, and overall a great piece of writing.
She followed her story with a live video projection feed of her face from within her tent. She would then put miniature toy/model objects in her mouth, react with quick, silly facial expressions and then slowly spit the objects out. Each object seemed to be curated along with the themes of the narrative. As she was spitting out different objects including a baby, a miniature Moby Dick book, a tiny bottle of bleach, and a bunch of mice, I attempted to make connections.
I recalled her mentioning how she decorated her apartment with tchotchkes she collected throughout her childhood. A manifestation of a memory, and object representing one’s golden era, a symbol of a heroic moment, tchotchkes aren’t just junk to their owners because they contain energy from a more hopeful time when dreams were obtainable. They are lingering reminders of past lives, lives absent of hatred, insanity and self-harm.
Thanks for the nice review!
