A still from Jessica Lagunas’s “The Better to Kiss You With.†(2003).Image courtesy of the artist and El Museo del Barrio, New York.
Inflaming Lips
El Museo del Barrio’s fifth annual “Bienal: The (S) Files†opened yesterday, with enough paintings, drawings, photographs, videos, sculptures, multimedia works, and site-specific installations to choke a starving artist. The above still is from Jessica Lagunas’s video “The Better to Kiss You With,†an obsessive self-portrait in which Lagunas applies red lipstick continuously for an hour. One hopes that with the exposure she gets from the show, she’ll be able to buy a mirror. —Rachel Wolff