Savage, 2020
single-channel TikTok video, sound, 1 minute 4 seconds

Commissioned for Don't Let Yourself Go, 2020, curated by Megan Monte and Josephine Skinner, Cement Fondu

View the work on Don't Let Yourself Go

Savage is a digital performance in which the artist utilises TikTok to embody a filmed interaction between Chinese-born American journalist, Weijia Jiang and former US President, Donald Trump. During their exchange, he infamously responds to one of her questions by suggesting that, “you should ask China.”

In the original footage, the journalist’s mouth and dialogue are obscured by a face mask in contrast to Trump who appears without a mask. Using the ‘Duet’ facility of TikTok, the artist lipsyncs and animates her questions while coordinating his body to the viral choreography of the #SavageChallenge (originally created by user Keara Wilson in response to the global hit ‘Savage’, by American rapper Megan Thee Stallion). In melding these references, he produces a strange performance in which synchronicity is displaced by conflict, and choreography moves bodies to an inaudible will.

Savage reflects on the racism that has defined Trump’s response to COVID-19 – among other pandemics – as well as the soft power exerted globally by American popular and political culture. It leans into the chimeric absurdity of contemporary media and domestic self-performance during the shared self-isolation of 2020. If the pandemic is the “great equaliser”, then who is nasty? Who is savage?