Lulu Bonfils — Room 3557

I’m Me as Well

Lulu Bonfils
8.4.2023 - 9.8.2023

“People who watch and do not want to be watched, people who listen and do not want to talk, people who live vicariously, are just perverts...” -Natasha Stagg, Surveys

Wearing a silver orb on my chest.
Watching a video of a girl describing the sensation of biting into a peach.

I’m, like, leaving my temporal body behind rn.....
Acquiring geotags like prized landscape paintings, getting certified for CPR online.

I’m desperate for the removal flying brings. When I’m there I’m gone. I am gifted the separation I crave so badly and I’m anonymous again.

I liked to wait in line. Whenever I noticed one and could spare the time I would join, although more satisfying than this was waiting in line when I absolutely must - for a prescription, for a headshot, for a custom license plate (FAITH LUVTRST on the back of my convertible), for baggage claim.

I cleared my mind as animations of mist wavered to the spinning circle of a loading screen. I thought back to when I would have been confined to being just a girl. Now I was everywhere. Looking down was part of it, looking out constantly was key. My fingers tapped the rhythm of a heartbeat.

I boarded the plane early after the pilot noticed me. I shared the same birthmark as his late sister, a heart shaped mole on my left cheek. The girl sitting next to me was google image searching to see if the man two rows over was a Survivor. Or was he a Big Brother? She knew his face from somewhere.
A filter analyzed her face shape and drew on the perfect eyebrow arch. A video instructed her on a double glance eye contact seduction maneuver.

Why did the image find me? The name Sofia tattooed on a flexing bicep. A video filmed inside the confines of a coat closet, looking out through a keyhole, hiding to surprise someone walking through the front door. Waiting for the jump scare, then the sound of laughter and the two were embracing. Boys rolling glass bottles off a rooftop, glimpsing palm trees, hearing the wind and the sound of glass shatter. All these moments provided my soundtrack; I could traipse between time. No one would know. All the others would see was a girl in a cropped top.
In 6 hours I am down, and I’m back inside the structure. Now I am the white LAX tile. Now I’m the Toyota Camry on the 405.

Axes grind. Kittens’ whiskers meet. Billboards promote young love and teen abstinence, call us to God.

In I’m Me As Well Lulu Bonfils creates a contemporary city of one. In this city, time collapses into a state of constant present. Strangers' images feel familiar. Language is distorted, imploding with reference upon reference. New age nostalgia like Pokémon cards and fidget spinners are sorted into sculptures calling to mind single-serving hotel rooms or airport terminals. What does it mean to fall asleep to rain sounds recorded 3,000 miles away? Or to follow the skincare routine from a get ready with me for my bat mitzvah tutorial? To know the interior of an apartment we will never step inside? The artist answers with timeless poetic impulses: to collect, to examine, to distill, to make meaning.

- Dakotah Weeks Murphree