Gigi

As an artist, she was all flash and no follow-through. Ideas bubbled up and burst in rapid succession, each one more absurd and captivating than the last. Today, it was mannequins in burqas; yesterday, it was condoms filled with glitter; tomorrow, who knows? Maybe a self-portrait series in a cracked bathroom mirror, her body half-clothed or not at all. You’d find yourself turning these strange, luminous concepts over in your mind like small intricate stones, imagining their textures and their meanings, only to realize she’d already moved on to the next fleeting inspiration.

Her studio was equal parts shrine and junkyard. A few half-finished canvases leaned against the wall, and a mannequin with a missing arm stood in the corner draped in silk scarves and chains, both of which were probably stolen from a downtown thrift shop. Polaroids exploded across a glass coffee table—her naked body contorted in various poses, some absurd, others quietly obscene. She’d light a cigarette, glance at the photos with an expression bordering on contempt, and declare, “These are for my next show. Something about commodification. Or power. Or tits. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just about selling.” Her laugh was always the same, dry and faintly malicious.

It wasn’t that she lacked talent—she didn’t. When she did finish something—and this was a rare, almost seismic event—it invariably carried a kind of unfiltered energy that made people pay attention. Her last piece—a series of large silkscreens of her dressed as a Catholic schoolgirl, licking a lollipop while holding a whip—was shown in a gallery in Culver City and sparked a minor outrage. Some vapid art rag called it “a liminal exploration of post-ironic femininity,” which made her snort. “It’s not about the whip,” she told a reporter with deadpan conviction. “It’s about power. Or maybe just that I like whips.”

And yet, she was magnetic. She made you feel as though every half-formed idea could turn into something brilliant, something revolutionary, if only you followed her lead. But she’d get bored, as she always did, and you’d find yourself left with fragments of her ambition—cryptic notes scrawled on cocktail napkins, cigarette butts piling up like miniature gravestones, and sometimes a late-night drunken text that read, “Do you think nudity is still provocative?”

In the end, it wasn’t about the art at all. It was about her, or maybe the space she occupied—the blur between performance and person, between chaos and creation. That’s where she lived, in that hazy in-between. Maybe that was the art: her Duchamp-like refusal to be pinned down, her endless flirtation with non-meaning. Or maybe, in the end, she just wanted someone to watch.