1991 "Wait For The Waitress" , Studio Guenzani, Milan.

For my first one-person show, which was also my first show in a commercial gallery, i divided the gallery space into two distinct areas: one, which included the gallerist’s office and the reception, was turned into a film set, although nobody was actually filming. The other, larger, exhibition area became a projection room.

I asked the gallery owner, Claudio Guenzani, to play the gallerist role, and placed 500-Watt quartz film lights in his office. By walking into his office critics and collectors found themselves under the same bright spotlights and became slightly self-conscious, as they suspected somebody might start filming them. Wearing a waitress uniform I stood behind the bar I set up in the reception area and served drinks throughout the opening. There was no indication that it was a performance; as this was my first appearance in the Milanese art scene, my identity could be easily disguised.

The exhibition room on the other hand was darkened with thick black curtains and one of the walls served as a screen for a floor-to-ceiling projection. It showed a picture I had taken at the opening of the American Pavillion during the 1990 Venice Biennial: a waiter and a waitress serving drinks. They were both Afro-Americans, a disturbing reinforcement of a racial stereotype. Those who walked into this room became part of the projection, no longer just innocent viewers, they found themselves cast into the role of white middle-class guests attended to by black waiters.

The soundtrack consisted of unauthorized recordings of all the openings I had attended during the previous year. Past comments and voices blended with present ones. Past openings became the object of the exhibition people had been invited to, creating a surreal loop of disjointed time. This show paid homage to Bertolt Brecht’s theatre theory, the Verfremdung Effekt in particular, and to Alain Robbe-Grillet, whose screenplay, Last Year in Marienbad, was on my bedside table at the time when I started thinking about my solo show at Studio Guenzani.