Domestic Goddesses: Housewives with Steak Knives and How Mum and Ah Ma Do Decoration
Jay Tan

it’s a stream. of bits. a teen dream you’ll never wake up from. an epic costume drama set in an ornate wooden library, trapped behind Georgian windows. the wait of books. it starts with touching yourself absentmindedly under your many skirts, while flicking through art history. then there’s lots of running, always lots of running. forests, fainting, catching cold, being the last one on the ship with the code, calibrating telescopes, riding snakes through tunnels, then the beheading of all those men, the aging out of the mean girls with the cool trainers – their laughs (faces) melt. you become Kali from the South, your hair is crazy and you live off your own blood, all of the housewives fall in love with you… and you are sponsored by hot glue, rag-rugs, shells, baby owls, being tough, friendship bracelets, hairpins, Barbie shoes, pregnancy tests, dried flowers, gold braid, broken blenders and beach plastic.

Jay Tan makes sculpture, performance, sound and video. She grew up in South London during the eighties, assuming most heads of state were female. Currently, she lives and works in Rotterdam, where she also co-runs new community space, Tender Center. She completed her MFA at the Piet Zwart Instituut in 2010 and was a 2014/15 resident at the Rijksakademie. She has presented work at Kunstverein Langenhagen, Ujazdowski Castle, Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw, Ellen de Bruijne projects and Gallerie van Gelder, Amsterdam, Futura, Prague, Kunstverein, Amsterdam, Vleeshal, Middleburg, the CAC, Vilnius, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Hollybush Gardens, London, Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam and RongWrong, Amsterdam. Jay teaches Fine Art at the Rietveld Academie and is hosting a Studium Generale reading group on dreaming while writing-reading and describing the feelings of searching (not discovering).