Jordan Wolfson: Animatronics, Puppetry, and Power

Jordan Wolfson is best known for a pair of animatronic sculptures made in rapid succession. In one (Female Figure, 2014), a woman before a mirror who wears white, thigh-high boots and skimpy clothes, dances seductively to music, all the while watching the spectator, whose movements she tracks via facial recognition software. Yet, her white outfit is soiled, and the joints that allow for the realism of her dancing are purposefully exposed. Moreover, although she occasionally speaks, she does so elliptically and only in fragments, using a male voice, which is, in fact, the voice of the artist. Additionally, her face, which is partially covered by a repulsive, shiny green mask recalls the Wicked Queen of Disney’s Snow White. Executed in 2016, Colored Sculpture also consists of a lone figure – an adolescent boy – tethered by chains to an industrial-looking armature. Red-headed and dressed in tattered clothes, he is an amalgamation diverse characters (Huck Finn, Chuckie, Pinocchio, etc.), just as the work is a combination of parts sutured together, as are a marionette’s at the joints. He moves erratically: sometimes with speed, urgency, and violence, his body and head banged on the floor as if by an invisible, sadistic puppeteer, and sometimes floating gracefully of his own seeming volition. Saying what’s at stake in these characters, both of whom reappear in the artist’s most recent video work (Riverboat Song, 2017), is the task I undertake in this paper, which focuses on puppetry in relation to authorship, sex, and power.