MANSION RUG LIBERATION NETWORK

ONGOING

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

MRLN is a sprawling and long-term multidisciplinary project, chronicling a fictional organization of femmey queers who meet on a filthy rug in a dank basement to plot against the American political and corporate elite, but become distracted by their investment in building relationships with one another. They spend most of their time making out and making objects that both demonize and fetishize the homes and material belongings of their targets.

Through the fiction of MRLN, I produce rugs, drawings, cartoons, zines, video and performance (some of it in collaboration with Betsy Johnson, and their fictional paramilitary organization Verses Versus). Some of the work is presented as if it is literally authored by MRLN and their leader, Chloris (played by me), while some credits the real me, Ruby, as a 3rd party contractor who they have outsourced to. Other work I more loosely categorize as originating from the conceptual framework of MRLN, while allowing it to take on additional associations, concerns, and collaborators.

At its core, MLRN is about the ambiguity between our culture’s critique of wealth accumulation and our overwhelming desire for property and status. It is also a meditation on the work of bonding and caretaking, which is often overlooked in dominant narratives of social movements.

Right now I am particularly excited about drawing water. I am thinking about water and the ecstatic and impossible act of representing it. Drawing water has become a broad container for signifying the vibrations, possibilities, and contradictions of revolutionary endeavors. MRLN considers water, particularly rivers, as a spiritual home— where their allegiances are tested in the violent currents, where they drown their enemies, and where they aspire to live out their days in ever-churning motion.