A still from Jessica Lagunas’s “The Better to Kiss You With.” (2003).Image courtesy of the artist and El Museo del Barrio, New York.
Inflaming Lips
El Museo del Barrio’s fifth annual “Bienal: The (S) Files” opened yesterday, with enough paintings, drawings, photographs, videos, sculptures, multimedia works, and site-specific installations to choke a starving artist. The above still is from Jessica Lagunas’s video “The Better to Kiss You With,” an obsessive self-portrait in which Lagunas applies red lipstick continuously for an hour. One hopes that with the exposure she gets from the show, she’ll be able to buy a mirror. —Rachel Wolff
