Lucy McKenzie. The Tenant

'The Tenant' is a monographic critical essay by Marie Canet. It is the first text to directly address the connections between McKenzie’s work, pornography, and special effects. The title refers to the way the artist moves through different periods and aesthetic spaces, appropriating their codes in order to construct new visual fictions. The book is infused with post-#MeToo feminist thinking, alternative uses of biography, reflections on the art world, and contemporary debates surrounding appropriation, embodiment, and the status of the artwork. Lucy McKenzie works with different mediums from painting to installation and creates environments with references in eclectic sources: from propaganda murals in Eastern Europe to the iconography of the Cold War, 1980s pop music or industrial typography. McKenzie and Canet worked with each other for over eight years, on projects like 'Atelier E.B: Passer-by' catalogue, published on the occasion of the Fondation Galeries Lafayette exhibition, or the book 'Pervert or Detective', a conversation between McKenzie and artist Reba Maybury. This new collaboration now culminates in an exhibition and a book: 'Plastic Newspaper' (presented at CRAC Sète in March 2026) and Lucy McKenzie: The Tenant.