Agata Oleksiak spent the night in Allegheny County Jail after staging an unusual protest at the Mattress Factory museum in Pittsburgh. Oleksiak, a New York-based Polish textile artist, had been artist-in-residence at the institution but was kicked out following an incident at a party. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that on 2 February at Imbibe Pittsburgh, a beer- and wine-tasting private hire event in the museum lobby, Oleksiak is alleged to have headbutted a fellow guest. She denies the accusation. Oleksiak was wearing a pair of virtual reality goggles at the time, and says that while she did make contact with the man, causing a bloodied lip, it was accidental and he had pushed her while she was virtual-knitting. She received a police citation for that incident.
In protest of her treatment by the Mattress Factory, Oleksiak returned to the museum a week later to set up a stall of brightly coloured woven penises in the gallery lobby, attempting to sell the woolly phalluses to visitors. That protest came ahead of a music performance by Nathan Hall, a composer whose work references ‘intimacy and kink’.
Oleksiak was arrested for defiant trespass.
24 February 2020
