Conversation with Toxic Titties, Los Angeles, 2003

Toxic Titties reflect on their collaborative practice, which began during their graduate studies at CalArts, and their commitment to collective art-making. They investigate how feminist strategies—critical discourse, collaboration, and multiple authorship—can challenge corporate exploitation while also being co-opted for profit.

Their work examines advertising, using IKEA’s first American TV commercial featuring a gay couple as a case study. Toxic Titties explain, “We were thinking about new strategies in advertising,” reinterpreting the commercial by replacing the couple with themselves as different personas: “There’s, like, a certain group of people who looks at that kind of advertising as though it’s indicative of some kind of social progress. But actually, it’s really just for the advancement of capital.” Their work extended to an IKEA showroom installation, where visitors could engage with the commercial’s themes.

The discussion also touches on camp aesthetics, particularly how Toxic Titties’ work exaggerates femininity to the point of drag. They note the historical association of camp with gay male culture: “Lesbian culture doesn’t have so much camp,” inspiring them to apply that kind of strategy to lesbian and feminist spaces, emphasizing gender performativity. They reference their Camp Camp project—a feminist summer camp-style installation that combined aggressive advertising, interactive events, and community engagement to make feminist discourse more accessible.

Throughout the conversation, they address the challenges of feminist activism within institutional and corporate spaces and the struggle to avoid reinforcing the very systems they critique. They resist rigid definitions of feminism, instead embracing fluidity: “Another strategy we use is embodying different roles all the time, everything from being, like, a biker gang to a family…that kind of indeterminacy is part of our feminist practice.”

One project involved creating a legally binding business partnership, structured to gain similar benefits to traditional unions like marriage or corporations while playfully subverting societal norms. Toxic Titties explain, “We’re looking at what unions get privileged in this culture…it’s more like a gesture than anything else, but there are ways of providing yourself with the same kind of opportunities that a heterosexual marriage is given, or a large corporation.” They celebrated the partnership with a satirical wedding featuring traditional roles, performances, and symbolic acts.

Toxic Titties describe their practice as intentionally ambiguous, blurring the line between performance and reality. Their work defies categorization, allowing them to challenge established systems: “We have this complete freedom to make whatever we want, like, assuming power, trying to create new structures or [finding] ways out instead of fighting against these monolithic structures.”