Crappy Gifts for Complete Strangers / VIVO, February 1-14, 2009

An homage to queer friendship and a critique of Valentine’s Day, Crappy Gifts for Complete Strangers was created by longtime colleagues and friends Emma Hendrix and Tanya Marquardt. Wanting to express their platonic love for one another as a contrast to the expectations of the impending February 14th, Emma and Tanya made a list of fourteen ‘crappy’ gifts — macaroni love letters, homemade dolls, paper mache hearts cut with kiddie scissors — then recorded Tanya making each gift on the bench outside the VIVO building. Overlaying the video with Hendrix’s sound to create a DVD of the documentation along with the crappy gift made in the video, Hendrix and Tanya put each DVD-gift set into a cheap heart box and left one on the VIVO bench everyday from Feb 1-14 with a sign that read “This Gift Is For You”. They would then wait across the street until a stranger took the gift away, a playful offering and teasing at the edges of what a gift can be, sentimentality over expense, and the joy of love.