In ‘Pervert or Detective?’ Reba Maybury and Lucy McKenzie dissect power, desire, and subversion in an installation including murals, drawings, paintings, and a publication. Maybury, who integrates her work as a political dominatrix into her artistic practice, manipulates the dynamics of control, compelling her male submissives to create art under her direction, only to claim it as her own. Through confession and humiliation, she dismantles notions of authorship, masculinity, and labor. McKenzie, known for her intricate trompe l’oeil paintings and conceptual installations, similarly blurs boundaries—between art and commerce, authenticity and illusion. Her work challenges power structures and exposes the unstable nature of representation.

The publication ‘Pervert or Detective?’ is based on an expansive conversation between the two artists, moderated by Marie Canet. Maybury and McKenzie interrogate the logic of seduction and domination, challenge rigid binaries, and explore the material erotic, appropriation, and transformation. Edited and introduced by Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen, the book includes an afterword by Susan Finlay and is published by no place press (distributed by MIT press). – Publisher’s blurb.