IMN #5 — Bored Ape Ladies Club

1/19 It's Monday Night #5
Let's share thoughts about a cryptoart project.This time, I want to talk about the work of an artist collective that I find promising: @BoredApeLadies. They are probably one of the next big thing in this space.

Goethe once said: «If monkeys could reach the point of being bored, they could turn into human beings.» But he could have added: «If human beings could eliminate boredom, they could turn into apes again».

Every Bored Ape is a kind of utopia: an ape that would be bored and yet remain ape. More precisely: a human who’d become an ape again through the boredom that had made them human.

But what about Bored Ape Ladies? They are changing the rules of the game and at the same time show that they are the best at it.

Obviously, it is not just a question of feminizing Bored Apes which, in general, refer to masculine codes. It is nothing less than joining forces to invent a completely new mythology. Every Bored Ape Lady is a sort goddess capable of reinventing a whole world in her image.

A regular Bored Ape is both unique and banal. This is the basic principle of a PFP: you look like everyone else but you are different from all the others. For its part, Bored Ape Ladies are completely queer.

The Bored Ape Ladies are all allied to each other. They don't care if this or that ape has more or less rare properties. And the only interesting question is what happens when a Bored Ape meets a creative act which could either destroy or appropriate it.

Let’s focus the November drop. A very interesting part which differentiates the collection in question a bit from similar projects, is that the creators are called to keep their personal artistic style whilst creating the Lady Apes.

This results in a very diverse and interesting collection that includes from pieces using AI and VR to pieces traditionally hand-drawn, from pieces informed from history of art to pieces addressing body and queer politics, from conceptual approaches to merely aesthetical ones.

It was a difficult decision to take, as each bored ape lady carries her own history, concept and, why not, artist behind her, but I have to limit myself in elaborating more on just three of them. Two of them already sold out, and one, weirdly enough, still on primary.

I Shine, from @nfteye, achieves a brilliant combination of poetic art and algorithmic poetry. A golden ape declares in a neutral voice ready-made sentences while around her the lines of code scroll by. In the background, a minimalist piano melody.

The whole thing produces a singular aura: @nfteye invents a completely new lyricism that captures us in a kind of melancholic resemblance with the machine.

Lady Gentileschi, from @Golara_art, explores and plays with the genre of the ready made in the purest Duchampian tradition.

@golara_art's piece claims a form of authority or glorious ancestry (Lady Artemisia herself) and at the same time shatters the icon through the ironic montage of heterogeneous elements. Art history is summoned here but to be rewritten.

Lady Mapedusa, from @isboredagain, offers a mutant transformation of a Bored Ape into the mythological figure of Medusa.

In a falsely naïve style, @isboredagain reinterprets the official story of the Medusa: she broke the mirror just before staring at us intensely, there is nothing left to save us from petrification.

But, at the same time, @isboredagain radical gesture of subversion comes across as both a joke and nonsense: instead of big words and declarations, Eleni prefers a black-and-white enigma that deactivates the myth while replaying it in another way.