Main Gallery
Hamilton’s My Lady
Kiera Boult
Exhibition: May 8th - July 27th 2024
Opening Reception: May 10th 2024
About the Exhibition
Hamilton’s My Lady is a video installation that draws from comedian and famous Hamiltonian Martin Short’s 2012 comedy special I, Martin Short, Goes Home. The video follows the beloved persona Kiki as she combines autobiography, cultural critique, and comedy to take audiences into the often mocked and stereotyped Steel City. The work tours through historical sites of systemic failure, monuments of light-skin hubris, and famous Hamilton attractions, all while Kiki tells two stories of desire and identity that run parallel to Hamilton and herself.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kiera Boult is a Hamilton-based artist working in performance and video installation. She uses tropes of stand-up comedy, camp, and reality TV to skeptically address issues that surround the role and/or identity of the artist and the institution. Her work often features the performance persona Kiki, who offers audiences critiques and “hot takes” from her skewed position as a celebrated Black bi-racial (light skin) icon and self-described “guilt-free” celebrity. Presentations of Boult’s work explore the intersections of identity, popular culture, urban planning, and the social constructions of cities.
Her most recent performance, Hamilton’s My Lady (2022), was a part of the 2022 7A*11D performance art festival and Supercrawl – Hamilton’s Music + Arts Festival. In 2019, Boult received the City of Hamilton Arts Award for Emerging Visual Artist. Her work has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and Artcite Inc. Windsor. She holds a BFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCAD University and is currently Vtape’s Manager, Outreach & Public Programming.
ABOUT THE Writer
Delilah Rosier is an artist and writer born, raised, and based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her work concerns performance, popular and visual culture through a lens of queer theory, race politics and intersectional feminism. She holds a BA from OCAD U’s Criticism and Curatorial Practice
program, an MA from York University’s Theatre and Performance Studies program, and an MA from OCAD U’s Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Histories.
Dr. Delores Derosier aka Dr. DD Rosé is the leading expert on Kiki & Kikiology. She is the Dean, Associate Dean, Chair, Head Administrator, Administrative Assistant, Lecturer, Sessional Lecturer, Professor, Adjunct Professor, Head Researcher, Exploited Intern, and Custodian of the underfunded and understaffed Faculty of Urban Criticism and Kikiology (F.U.C.K). Her dissertation The Icon Wore Spanx: From James Street North to the Stages of the Institution is suspiciously untraceable. Rosé has been banned from Hamilton, Ontario since 2020.
This work was made possible with funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, FADO Performance Art Centre, FMC’s &Now Residency and Ontario
