Less than a
week after Providence
photographer John E. Coli Nikolai unveiled his final
Boston-area solo exhibition for a good long time, he’s already taking the
show down after the ZuZu removed eight pieces of artwork that staff, management
and clientele found potentially offensive or inappropriate.
Two or three
days after the show’s August 6th opening reception, Nikolai stopped in to check
up on the show and found that one piece had been removed. (Called “Snatching A
Glance,” it consisted of a prosthetic vagina with a glass eyeball peering out
of it, presented in a shadowbox and framed in crotchless panties.)
Nikolai was
told that, the day before, a diner in the bar/restaurant/club had complained
that the work was offensive and it was taken down. He promptly hung it back it up.
But when he
walked into the venue on Saturday, he found that piece and 7
others had been removed, including “Feeling Lucky?”, which depicts a giant rabbit about
to saw the foot off of nude model Alison Little; an untitled black and white
photo of a topless woman holding a mask up to her face; and “53rd & 3rd,”
in which a topless woman at the NYC street corner immortalized in the Ramones
song.
“I knew
right away that I was going to take the entire show down because what remained
is not the show that I hung but a sadly diluted version of it that I don’t
stand behind and that I won’t stand for,” Nikolai says in an e-mail. “I
understand that ZuZu is a respectable establishment [but] it’s a matter of
respect — self respect, respect for my own work and respect and support for my
model, Alison Little, who has been completely removed from the exhibit by ZuZu
— that I’m taking what’s left of the
show down and getting everything out of there as soon as I possibly can.”
"As it was explained to me, John Nikolai has had
shows here at Zuzu in the past without any problems,” says Kevin Hoskins,
talent buyer and booking agent at the Middle East. “When
the new exhibit went up, a few customers including a couple families
complained. As The Middle East is both an artist-friendly venue and a family
establishment, Mr. Nikolai was asked to take some of the more explicit
pieces in the exhibit.”
Starting
with the group show HUNG which he first curated in Cambridge in 2005, several of Nikolai’s shows have suffered from
censorship of content by the venue hosting the show. Club
Passim wouldn’t allow Cynthia Plaster Caster’s plaster cast of Jimi Hendrix’s
penis to appear in the HUNG exhibit, though they did allow it to appear at
the opening. When HUNG moved to CBGB as that club’s final anniversary art show
at the turn of 2006, club owner Hilly Kristal told Nikolai that some of the
artwork was inappropriate and it was removed.
“I’m
getting used to this happening but I don’t like it. If I hadn’t already planned
on this being my final solo show in Boston for many years ahead, this would
have been the final nail in the coffin,” Nikolai writes, noting that ZuZu asked
him if he’d be replacing the removed artwork. “Why would I do that? The show
was called ‘Ask Your Mom How Much I Rock,’ not ‘Ask Your Mom How Much I’ll
Compromise What I Do So That No One Might Be Offended.’”
Nikolai has
already had found another home for the banished pieces. He’ll be moving some of
the work to the JP Art Market in
Jamaica Plain until the end of August, where it will join a group show in
progress. Once he takes it down from there, has no plans to show in Cambridge again.
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