Felix Bernstein
Visual Arts Residency

During his residency at Pioneer Works, New York-based artist, poet, and writer Felix Bernstein will rehearse for his exhibition, Bieber Bathos Elegy, which will debut at The Whitney Museum of American Art. Bieber Bathos Elegy is a hybrid work of musical performance that transforms from poetry to cabaret drag to lonely web voyeurism to deconstructive criticism to opera. Illuminating issues of identity and persona, Bernstein ponders the concept of bathos — the failure to achieve pathos — rendering the “art of failure” into the art of perfection and positioning queerness as normality and subversion as expected. “Justin Bieber” visits the stage as a prophetic angel to critique Felix’s perverse rapture and queer museum hysteria, while artist Shelley Hirsch leads a gay youth chorus in a rendition of “Tomorrow” from the musical Annie.