This article was originally written by Lindsey Cummins and published on Queerkentucky.com
She’s just a girl, and she just wants to have fun.
“Clovers,” a performance duo between artists Cooper L. Gibson & Perry K. Wesley
What do you get when you pair up a documentary photographer invested in subcultures like hardcore music and wrestling with an anti-disciplinary queer artist? What you get is the one and only, the girl herself, Clovers. It wouldn’t suffice to call the performance persona Clovers simply an aspiring pop star, but despite her over-the-top aura, the category of drag doesn’t seem to sum it up either.
Really, Cooper L. Gibson, the artist beneath the wigs and costumes, tells me, “She’s just a girl.” But would we know who Clovers is, or would she have the right sound, without her DJ/Bodyguard/Photographer/Manager Perry K. Wesley? I sat with both in Cooper’s Lexington apartment to gossip and whisper tabloid secrets about the two enigmatic artists behind the more explicit, sequined duo.
Both Wesley and Gibson found their way to Lexington as many do, hailing from rural Somerset and Eubank, Kentucky. Like many weird Kentucky kids, they grew up in old churches listening to hardcore bands, and it was at one of those shows that the two met.
Both Gibson’s individual artist practice and the duo’s collaborative star Clovers work to unpack what it means to be a queer person from a rural place. Donning cowboy boots and cheap rhinestone outfits, Clovers uses all the glory of the pop music industrial complex to resculpt Gibson into a girl onstage who can be found having banter with her audience and preaching “I love the gays!” and “The gays are driving me crazy!” into the mic, all in the same night.
“It’s me and it’s not me,” said Gibson, who told me that Clovers became a bastion of fun and playful creativity that countered the oftentimes all-too-serious seriousness of the art school experience. As Clovers, they were free to do “freaky weird shit” that didn’t have to sit through a critique. And while originally conceived as a solo project, Wesley soon became an essential component, playing the aloof managerial role and curating staple pop culture songs into the performance mix.
Their art involves playing with and building the lore of a problematic, messy, lovable pop culture icon, and in doing so, offering up something that straddles the line of entertainment and art. It’s not that serious, and it is. She’s Yoko Ono, Madonna, Britney, Laurie Anderson. She’s you and me. She’s every girl ever. She is an artist because she isn’t, and so she is.
Clovers is assemblage. She speaks to where she’s from, who made her, and who is watching her. Onstage, she tells stories, jokes, and lies, and it’s her separation from Gibson and Wesley that allows her the freedom to take these risks. The medium of that experimentation—the simplistic structure and commodified spirit of pop music—makes her an apt vessel to point out the oddities and beauty of the machine that moves her along.
One way they have extended this spirit of experimentation is through Clover’s “rhinestone.jpeg” parties. She’s just a girl, but she’s also a hostess. At Clover’s events, you can expect to find dancing, performance, and a haven for those who just want to have fun.
The two tell me that Clovers is just getting started, but assure me that if she calls it quits, it’ll surely be due to a dramatic and public falling out between them. This is especially funny because one thing that struck me during my visit was how wonderful their dynamic seemed, with each complimenting the other in turn. Clovers may be a hot mess, but the artfulness of her performance seems to owe some of its magic to a healthy and supportive friendship. Whether she rides the Chappell Roan overnight wave to success or raves onstage about her unfair place in obscurity, the spectacle is sure to catch our attention and have us seated in the audience of performance art whether we know it or not.
Read more from Lindsey Cummins at Queerkentucky.com
