The Jester / The Wall

The king laughs because the jester (the fool, the clown) has told a joke. The joke is a suspended state, half in, half out, the world yanked up into the ether to be inspected. The joke pauses normality, it pulls everything into question, makes everything a potential subject. There is set up, expectation, subversion, resolution (hilarity). The punchline is: never what you expected — if you expect it, it isn’t fucking funny. The jester, the jester, the jester has privileges that no one else in the court has access to. The jester can call the king a dickhead (as long as it is unexpected, as long as it is funny). The jester flies under the radar, works in this liminal space. The fool is loyal, the fool is wise, the fool knows everything! (The fool leans down to King Lear’s shoulder and whispers the pure unadulterated truth into his ear.) Shakespear loved his fools!!! They drove the story forward, he trusted them with complete insight, they were witnesses, half inside, half out. They knew: the best way to puncture the aura of power is to laugh at it, power hates to be laughed at, HA HA HA HA HA HA!

I am running through the Frieze tent, not looking sideways into any of the booths. I have tunnel vision. There is a crowd at the end of the tunnel, a flag, a brick wall. I follow it like a beacon, I push through the crowd. We wait. I sweat. This year I am apathetic (I am always apathetic about Frieze, but this year the apathy feels more like disgust). The cozzy livs, the material conditions, the scarcity (of resources, of space, of pay). More and more I go to openings and events and the art world is full of white people I don’t recognise: professional rich kids, the aggressively stylish, people who want to sellsellsell some art so they have something to do with all their time and money, people who want art as a kind of chic backdrop, marker of taste they’re trying to convince us all they have a monopoly over. An industry has been built around us to extract PROFIT. There used to be TALENT here! I am 31, jaded, old man shouting at clouds. Fuck an art fair, this circus, this farce, this zoo. Show me your studio (is it in your head, is it on your phone, where do your ideas go to die). The flag (the wall) comes down.

Sophia al Maria is going to commit career suicide. She’s going to do a stand-up comedy set (or some performance art? I’m not quite clear)— I know: it’s called WALL-BASED WORK. I stand on my tiptoes and peer back, the crowd stretches across the tent and I can’t tell where it ends. I cannot see through the crowd, I can only hear her voice, I can only hear her pacing, I can only see the wall. My career as a critic has felt a lot like banging my head against a brick wall. THIS WALL IS NOT THE FOURTH WALL, IT’S NOT THE BERLIN WALL, IT’S A METAPHORICAL WALL, THE WALL WE BUILD UP WITHIN OUR SELVES. IF IT WAS LIKE THE WAILING WALL AND YOU COULD INSERT YOUR PRAYERS INTO IT, I’D INSERT MY INVOICES, MAYBE SOMEONE WILL PAY ME. BADUM TSHHHHH THERE’S NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT THIS, THERE’S NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT THE HORRORS, ABOUT THE ART WORLD’S SAMSARA, SAMSARA? SAMSARA-ING BADUM TSHHHHH I HEAR THERE ARE SOME ROYALS HERE TODAY? IF THERE ARE, I GUESS THERE ARE, IF THERE ARE, THEN… YOUR MAJESTIES!!! IT IS I, YOUR HUMBLE JESTER. I HOPE I HAVE THE PRIVILEGE BADUM TSHHHHH A JESTER CAN NEVER BE A KING they are opposing forces, mutually exclusive, two ends of a binary spectrum.

Does an audience love you? Is it unconditional? Years and years ago, Linda Stupart tweeted ‘it’s fucked that being successful in the art world always involves letting people view you like a kind of celebrity’ or something like that. The wording doesn’t really matter, they were right. The art world is disgusting, ridiculous, maddening. It is peak-Babylon, mindless opulence through a window, we all watch with our noses pressed against the glass, pining for scraps. It is enough to make any sane person want to scream. IS AN AUDIENCE’S LOVE UNCONDITIONAL??? If you’re like a celebrity, will they stand there listening attentively while you scream bloody murder, while you lose your mind? Is that even love? How do you scream without it turning into a spectacle. A spectacle isn’t a true scream, a spectacle is a sight that is consumed, a sight that is passively observed. A true scream involves the audience’s implication. It requires reaction, it requires a wince. A true scream, under these circumstances, in this context, involves screaming in a way that evades the spectacle of screaming. You scream like this: I’M GOING TO LIGHTEN THE MOOD WITH SOME KARAOKE WHILE WE WAIT FOR THE CROWD TO CLEAR OUT. Cue Garth Brookes karaoke. You scream like this: Sophia al Maria shows us a powerpoint slideshow of art she thinks is cool or noteworthy.

Joseph Beuys, I Like America and America Likes Me, where the artist was wrapped in felt and locked in a room for 3 days with a wild coyote. Reena Spaulings, The Bricks, a painting of a brick wall on fabric that is draped from a hook on the wall (it hangs like a cloak). Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son. The Ghent Altarpiece’s Lamb of God / Agnus Dei (restored). Michelangelo’s sneaky Sistine Chapel self-portrait as St Bartholomew (post flaying, as skinsuit), THIS IS THE PINNACLE OF WORKPLACE GRIEVANCE! BADUM TSHHHHH Li Shuang’s tote bags with MARRY ME FOR CHINESE CITIZENSHIP in big block letters. I’M STILL WAITING FOR MY VISA, YEAH, MY VISA TO THE ACTUAL ART WORLD, THE ONE WHERE THEY MAKE ALL THE MONEY BADUM TSHHHHH And then (I can’t remember if this artwork popped up on a slide, if this artwork was specifically or obliquely mentioned, or if this artwork just popped into my head like an intrusive thought), DADDY DUCHAMP and his fountain. Anti-art, art that is so obviously not-art that it makes a mockery of what art actually is, art that undercuts or flips the category of art on its head. THIS GESTURE / JESTER / THE READYMADE, I DON’T THINK WE CAN STILL DO THAT NOW — found object is a medium category in and of itself now, it is aggressively stylish, sellsellsell-able, great as a chic backdrop for the makers-of-taste. And we live in an era where art isn’t really bound by medium or discipline, it is only defined by loose-abstract-aura or context, the past’s avant-garde aesthetic has gone mainstream and it is almost impossible to shock an audience. I think if anti-art exists in 2025, it exists as a kind of career suicide, as screaming without spectacle, as an hour long performance marketed as a stand-up set, where the artist waits for the crowd to clear out, never giving people the punchline they’re waiting for. This isn’t a fizzle or a flop, it is the subversion. The punchline is the punchline’s absence — anti-art. HA HA HA HA! I think Sophia al Maria is a genius.

I turn back again to peer at the crowd and there’s no one behind me, no one in front either, really. I can see the artist and her slideshow, I can see her pacing. There are like 40 of us left in the crowd and it’s me and a bunch of people I recognise as artists and — we’re all laughing. Sophia al Maria calls for a shaman, to separate the art from the artist. Bones Tan Jones is summoned to lead the vows. ART IS NO LONGER MY MASTER, I DO NOT INVOICE I MANIFEST, I CALL ON EVERY FUNDING BODY I HAVE EVER BEGGED FOR MONEY, MAKE IT RAIN… I AM NOT EMERGING, I AM NOT ESTABLISHED, I AM ETERNAL, I CANNOT BE FIRED, I QUIT. Bones asks Sophia to kneel, takes a pair of golden scissors, and cuts the artist’s Frieze lanyard from her neck. Yes, yes, we are laughing, we are whooping, we are clapping. Spiritually speaking, Sophia al Maria is free. The karaoke track starts up again. This time, Sophia has rewritten a song called Endless Art by A House. The original track listed the names of many dead white men (Turner, Warhol, Hemmingway, Orwell), Sophia has got a different list of dead artists and writers: Assata Shakur 1947-2025, James Baldwin 1924-1987, all dead, yet still alive. As she reaches the end of this lyrical list, Sophia al Maria yells: AND BISAN IS STILL ALIVE.

That was all I was here for. I turn and run back out of the Frieze tent. I am apathetic, I am free. I don’t want a visa for the actual art world (the one where they make money) because that’s the world I am apathetic (in a neutral-disgusted way) about. I don’t want to bang my head against a wall for a living, I don’t want to shout at clouds. I want a visa for the art world where all the talent lives, a world of studios in bedrooms, in phones, in heads — none of the industry hacks, none of the white people I don’t recognise, I want Bones Tan Jones to shamanically separate me!!! I am running, over the road, down the stairs into the tube station. I want the subversion, the anti-art absent-punchline spectacle-less scream— it sounds like a book I half-wrote years ago, and I am ecstatic that it has half-come-true. Maybe next time, I’ll half-write one where the jester kills the king, and then maybe we won’t all want to scream.