October 26, 2023

Jordan Strafer, PUNCHLINE
Participant, NY NY

January 5 – February 6, 2022

Some kind of thing is going to happen. I think we might be flying over Florida. The inrushing air sounds like a waterfall. I’m with the men. I’m lying down and they are standing up. One of them has diamond brooches on his shirt. Behind him there’s a pregnant woman and another man. One of them says, “put two fingers in your mouth and tell me a terrible story.”

I am wearing a short-sleeved mini dress. “He takes the joy out of everything,” I think to myself as he waits for the story. Then I say with my mouth full, “No matter how bad things are, they could always get worse. And behind every cloud… there's a lot of rain.” He says, “You’re kidding.” I pause and say, “Happy birthday daddy. This flight is an explosive bomb.”

The group is laughing. I think to myself, “I am really funny.” I say, “Let's tell each other something about ourselves.” Everyone starts butting in. I say, “Hold on, hold on. Let’s go in a circle.”

Then we make a circle of different things becoming the same thing. I dance on the line of this circle, but I do not cross it. It is lit only from the inside.

“For the love of horror puppets and reenacting trauma,” PARTICIPANT INC begins 2022 with PUNCHLINE, a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based video artist Jordan Strafer that will premiere the artist’s new video and related works on paper. Ambitious but not obnoxious, Strafer’s recently completed video work  PEAK HEAVEN LOVE FOREVER is based on a true story of kinship and betrayal aboard a transatlantic air ambulance from London to Miami. Including life-size dolls and starring live actors Cammisa Buerhaus, Marti Wilkerson, Jim Fletcher and Alexandro Segade, the video is a psychological thriller that takes place in flight—while time moves glacially, reality becomes suspended.

Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary 

Exhibition at Mala, Lisbon PT

October 15, 2021 - January 20, 2022

Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary. She is a legend and a promise and a ghost conjured to tell the future. Anyone can call her. If you stand in a dark room and say her name over and over again, she will appear in the mirror. Any room will do. She has appeared in your mother's silver vanity. She has appeared to a man about to die. And lately, she appears to be you.

For this exhibition, focused on the performative possibilities of photography and text through the media of collage and silkscreen printing, Buerhaus switches the body of the actor for the body of the viewer. These works are self portraits both multiplied and subtracted, distorted mirrors perverting binary systems of the father and daughter, owner and pet, of madness and sanity.

Two storyboards — You Have Heard Every Word I’ve Said  —   face each other. One tells the story, one directs the choreography — one has the body, the other, the head. Laser prints mounted on a mirrored mylar sheet tell the story of a father's death. You can pass the time by reading the words, but be warned. Your head might float away along with your memory.

On the floor, a group of silkscreened tiles representing the artist’s body are rearranged to abstraction. Like What You See renders the mystery of oneself, and the ways we try to solve the puzzle.

On the walls are Mine! and That’s Mine Too, two photos from an ongoing series, Performance from the Camera. In this iteration, the artist plays with her pussycat. Buerhaus assumes the role of the director, directing Gomi as she would an actor.