“Wilde used to say that “Salome” was a mirror in which everyone could see himself. The artist, art; the dull, dulness; the vulgar, vulgarity.”
– Robert Ross
(me as claude cahun as salome)
“I, Salome” is a series of nine transtemporal self-portraits as different actors throughout history portraying Oscar Wilde’s Salome. These portraits are accompanied by a poem of the same name that respeaks the Salome story via imagined embodiment, including both historical anachronism and personal narrative. That poem is below.
(me as alla nazimova as salome)
Off-script and out of time, I, Salome
I fourteen, Jewish daughter of Babylon,
adapting
deflecting
adopting
detracting a gaze
his gaze
their gaze and yours: allowed, agape,
a drooling dybbuk, a tyrant, incestuous fool,
and I see through it. I, Salome
I of New York, of Alexandria, Salonika and Izmir,
of green emeralds and baby dolls and
crushes on thin men of God,
a normal girl, good&pleasant, born royal&plain
to parents believing they knew and raised me right,
to love intellect and art, to make art and love and
conflate them, not confuse the two with desire and
blood,
for Identity,
unfixed and
unfound and
unfair
these vessels we’re given, the roles we’re cast,
our names beside our foils (God an unjust director)
or left off the list entirely. I, Salome
I existing in the how of my execution,
the little death of my creation, this script,
depicted and despised,
to the masses,
to the Christians
the critics
the Censor and
the court
till death do I, till I decide. I, Salome
am alive, reassumed off-script and out of time,
by freaks and rejects of home,
with whom I relate,
of whom they play to step inside my bound chest and
dance barefoot for the king.
If only the means to my end
could mean the ends I seek,
perhaps I’d reconsider, with no perverse thirst
for holy blood or worse (a dyke).
No peacock promise heap of pearls, no land mass, no
mother’s throne would rid these gilded lids,
this hunch
one head
his mouth
a kiss
seven veils and a charger. I, Salome
I so be it and so what?