A to Z

In this video, titled A to Z, Nadyé Kouagou addresses the audience and challenges a seemingly self-evident truth: “You have to finish what you started.” Adopting a tone that borrows from coaching, marketing, or scientific demonstration, Kouagou argues that not completing something from A to Z—stopping at N, for example—may not be so bad, and perhaps not bad at all. The artist reflects on feelings of failure: not having succeeded, feeling out of place, or being unable to do things the way you’re “supposed” to. This is a feeling shared by many LGBTQIA+ people when they realize they’ve “failed” the heterosexual test. This work continues the exploration begun in A Coin is a Coin, which questions the obvious binary nature of the world, as well as the supposed “naturalness” and self-evidence of things. The obviousness is shattered when viewed through the prism of troubled and deviant identities.