We went to the art exhibit USC didn’t want you to see
The Roski School of Art and Design censored the school’s biggest ‘cocktail’ party
The scandal-ridden Roski School of Art and Design has finally found the story it doesn’t want you to know. No, it’s not its last MFA student dropping out and calling the school a “sham,” though the school claims to have made a “transformative group hire” following last summer’s debacle. This time, Roski’s trying to cover up an actual spectacle: Jack McGuinn and Vidhi Todi’s exhibit, EZ IN EZ OUT.
It’s reputation precedes it for two simple reasons. First, it’s the only Roski exhibit in recent history which is meant to be transparent but has been covered up by a giant black curtain. Second, the exhibit features an entire wall of sculpted replicas of McGuinn’s penis.
The photography is sort of a Where’s Waldo? of McGuinn’s manhood
The gallery features a wall more infamous on USC’s campus than that of Berlin, but also a number of performative photographs taken by Todi. The center of the exhibit is partially curtained-off to a shoeless space, equal parts remnant of a movie theater and an opium den.
While some have speculated that the gallery intentionally satirizes objectification of the female form through McGuinn’s, the artist told us that the message stems from a much more inclusive place.
“The goal is to get people comfortable with themselves,” said McGuinn. “I think there’s an excess of everything here. It’s like cussing. It’s desensitization. The more there is, the more your worn to accept your natural state. Vidhi’s a great photographer, and I like to perform. It’s about clothes. It’s about the stuff we like to cover ourselves up with. It’s also about the different appearances I take on with each outfit versus who I am naked. Who Vidhi is just naked. The same person, but the clothes change you. We’re trying to strip that all down, but then show the different constructs we make with our fashion and with our performances.”
McGuinn and Todi
The ultimately did not have a child together, but they did have a dog.
The artists’ intentions makes the act of censorship all the more ironic. Although the exhibit and Thursday’s Gallery Show was billed on Roski’s website, the giant black curtain completely covered the transparent doors featuring the nude forms of Todi and McGuinn, thus obscuring the purpose and artistic invitation to the gallery.
“Basically what we’ve heard from the administration is that there are state and federal employment laws that mandate that people have the right to be exposed or not exposed to whatever they want, and then that you could see the exhibit from the hallway became and issue. To make it a non-issue, the administration covered up the entire entrance. I think because this is an art school, it’s a non-issue to begin with,” said McGuin. “Nudity’s never an issue, but we speculate [they’re responding like this] becasuse it’s male nudity. It should have been a non-issue to begin with, no censoring involved, not even tags on the genitalia on the doors. We wanted it to be transparent coming in and out. No clothes on and complete visual transparency. But it came into question and now we have a curtain.”
Regardless the schools desires, there’s no doubt that Todi and McGuinn have made massive waves both in and out of USC’s artistic world.
“I think it’s funny because it’s drawing more attention to the exhibit with the curtain than without,” said McGuinn. “It is censorship and I’m not for censorship. What I am happy about is that we have everything we want inside the gallery, and that’s the lion’s share of the space.”
We couldn’t even get a photo of the doors from the outside, so feat. McGuinn’s art, the censoring curtain and yours truly
EZ IN EZ OUT is on (partial) display at the Helen Lindhurst Fine Arts Gallery through Thursday, October 6.