Bianca Censori Restrained Women's Bodies in Furniture
For her performance art debut, titled ‘BIO POP.’
Melded flesh, restrained bodies and contortionist furniture came together in Bianca Censori’s performance art debut.
The Australian architect has become a sensation for her risqué looks, her body and her husband, Kanye West. The enigmatic muse has barely spoken out over the years despite the countless tabloid appearances, with rumors circling her and her well-being. This week, Censori caused the usual stir as she touched down in Seoul, South Korea, to debut BIO POP.
The 14-minute stunt staged with two performances definitely made a statement, while Censori never uttered a word. The first nine minutes saw the artist moving around the clean kitchen in a sexy red latex catsuit and pretending to bake a cake. After this calm domesticity is the stark contrast of the set, designed by Censori, revealed as she moves into a living room full of contortionist furniture resembling a naked Censori. The pieces mimic physical therapy tables and medical apparatus, some lined with shearling and featuring crutches, while the figures are morphed into BDSM-like poses.
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So what on earth does it mean? On the artist’s website, a statement reads, “BIO POP stages the body inside the language of the domestic.” Further adding, “The cake, baked in performance and carried to the table, is not nourishment but offering. It embodies the tension of the kitchen as origin, labor and ritual: a gesture of domestic service reframed as spectacle.” Notions of societal power structures, dominance and women’s bodies come into question here, but from what perspective?
Many enthusiasts have since come forward to question the designs due to their similarity to pieces by the artist Allen Jones. Jones famously created the 1969 piece, “Hatstand, Table and Chair,” as erotic sculptures, akin to the submissive female bodies propping up the furniture in BIO POP. While this is not the first time Jones has been referenced (previously by Rick Owens and FKA Twigs), we wait to see if there’s more to it. This performance marks the first in a series of seven, set to take place over the next seven years, so perhaps the message will become clear.
You can watch the full performance at this link, and while you’re here, check out Ottolinger’s Pre SS26 campaign.
