Honoring Genesis P-Orridge’s Legacy of Love, Art and Gender Revolt
nytimes.comGenesse P-Orridge had come to Brooklyn on a pilgrimage. She was paying homage to her father, and namesake, the English performance artist known as Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, who sought the destruction of the gender binary by moving through surgeries and pronouns on a mission made in the name of love.
At the art gallery Pioneer Works earlier this month, Genesse began carefully constructing a sanctuary for this fallen angel of the avant-garde, who died of leukemia two years ago.
Some may know P-Orridge as the cult rocker in British bands like Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV who dabbled in the occult and left England in 1991, only months before the police raided her home and allegations of satanic rituals surfaced.
Others recognize P-Orridge as one of the most influential and overlooked transgender artists of the last century. For Genesse, deciding to participate in the Pioneer Works exhibition that opened April 15, “Breyer P-Orridge: We Are But One,” was easy. “This is about my dad,” she said. “The things that may have shocked other people weren’t so shocking to me.” The life and work of P-Orridge has become increasingly relevant, at a time when transgender rights and nonbinary identity have been targeted by lawmakers in several states, and legislators have approved measures restricting discussion of L.G.B.T.Q.
