“The Prince of Homburg,” an exhibition at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, confronts power, fatigue, and the politics of the body head-on.
Created by P. Staff, a visual and performance artist based in London and Los Angeles, the solo exhibition centers around a 23-minute film addressing timely themes including body politics, imprisonment, exhaustion and resistance. It is on view on YBCA’s second floor through June 14.
“In recent months, as this country, and the world, keep sliding further into fascism, and we continue to witness the condemnation of certain lives, I feel like ‘The Prince of Homburg’—with its focus on agency and state control—really resonates,” says Jeanne Gerrity, curator of the exhibition. “It offers a way of understanding ourselves as political subjects and considers sleeping and dreaming as a form of resistance.”
Staff focuses on queer and trans bodies, experiences and histories, along with contradictory yet intertwined feelings of pain and pleasure. In its U.S. premiere, the YBCA exhibition touches on these topics and is loosely based on Heinrich von Kleist’s 19th-century play of the same name.
“The message of the play is actually quite ambiguous, and it has been interpreted by different societies to fit their agenda,” says Gerrity. “[I]t’s sometimes considered a triumph of individual will, whereas other times, most notably by the Third Reich, it’s viewed as an example of the omnipotence of the state.”
Staff’s take on the play differs.
“For [them], neither of those interpretations is correct. Neither the individual citizen nor the government will prevail,” Gerrity explains. “Staff’s interpretation is intentionally ‘promiscuous’ (in their own words) and abstracted.”
The YBCA exhibit is in a dark, spacious, air-conditioned room. There are chairs and several tables with LED-lit votive candles atop each. The video installation runs continuously on a large screen.
The film offers a layered sensory experience, including a narrator (genderqueer artist and writer Johanna Hedva), overlapping sounds, flashing colors and images, snippets of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and daytime and nighttime city scenes. Its three parts—titled “The Prince Is Sleepwalking,” “The Prince Is Imprisoned” and “The Prince to Be Executed”—examine exhaustion, freedom, and death, incorporating multiple voices on these themes.
Macy Rodman, a trans singer-songwriter, discusses hormone therapy’s lethargic effect; Debra Soshoux, a trans rights activist, talks about the definition of “law” in relation to gender and bodies; Black nonbinary writer and critical theorist Che Gossett comments on intersectionality and the prison system; and writer and LGBTQ+ activist Sarah Schulman discusses the complexities of death and funerals.
The exhibition also features “The Appetite,” a black fence-like sculpture hung high on the walls in and outside the film room, and five framed photograms — four derived from the film (“Slug,” “Chain,” “Knife” and “Glove”) grouped nearby.
A fifth, “F— the Clock,” is mounted on a bare wall visible from the stairway. A “Prince of Homburg” exhibition poster, resembling a music event flyer, is stapled to the opposite wall.
The exhibition also includes a small black bench and a table with books corresponding to the film’s themes and a copy of Kleist’s play.
In a pamphlet detailing “The Prince of Homburg,” Gerrity writes, “Staff’s installation viscerally expresses the weariness inevitable in today’s world—particularly for those marginalized and attacked by the state—while presenting a dizzying array of possible counteractions.”
Gerrity emphasizes that Staff’s work turns the exhaustion of marginalized people into a form of defiance.
”Weariness may be inevitable,” she continues, “but we can reclaim our exhaustion, thread it with gentle resistance, and use it as a force of change.”
The artist declined to comment for this story.
“The Prince of Homburg” continues through June 14 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St., San Francisco. Admission is $10 general, $5 for students and seniors. Visit ybca.org.