His 2016 music video Winolato although featuring lowbrow, humorous lyrics like “Why have abs when you can have kebabs?” and absurdity more regularly seen in circus ‘freak shows’ than in rap videos, one could draw comparisons between this and Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights Triptych in its surrealism and plethora of writhing flesh. Similarly, Owens too does not shy away from the subject of the human body, and even used exposed male genitalia in his Fall/Winter 2015 collection Sphinx.
Despite their differences, Owens and Cash both draw upon the concept of the surreal, one using a ‘higher’, more established art, the other, ‘low’ art. One of their collaborative pieces, an animated video installation for Mona Lisa, fuses both the high and the low in art through a playful combination of Renaissance-style paintings coupled with scenes of phallic fast food, as well as other contrasting visual imagery.
The animation sets a tone for the exhibition; challenging the normative representation of art and paradoxical union through contrast. For, despite its esteemed position over popular music, fashion is still considered lowly in the hierarchy of arts, likewise with rap music. Thus, this fusion of two art forms frowned upon by the art world as frivolous or vulgar is portrayed in a way that is fresh and afire with satire.
