The Curse of Downtown: Jamian Juliano-Villani

by KJ Freeman

Before engaging critically with the recent Vulture article, The Extremely Chaotic Life of Jamian Juliano-Villani by Jay Bulger, which attempts to romanticize the turmoil of Jamian’s life, I must first situate my response within the context of my own experiences. I am no stranger to failure or personal humiliation. I have been found passed out in my own vomit, woken up in soiled beds, and borne the consequences of my own recklessness.

But unlike Jamian, my recovery was not cushioned by privilege or framed as “authentic.” When my gallery collapsed, I turned to sobriety, intellectual engagement, and the solitude of exile—a clarity that only comes from social death. This response is not about personal vindication but a critique of a harmful narrative—a vaudeville act of privilege dressed as innovation, perpetuated by a system that rewards spectacle over substance. Ms. Juliano- Villani “mess” is not radical; it is indicative of an art world that privileges white mediocrity and celebrates destruction when performed within specific racial and social boundaries.

She survives not because of her talent but because she aligns with the industry’s idealized image of femininity: thin, white, and fragile. This art world, steeped in systemic inequity, is a place where 70-year-old men dating barely legal women is normalized, as seen in Larry Gagosian’s relationship with Anna Weyant, an age gap spanning nearly half a century. These dynamics are not accidental. They reflect the structural underpinnings of an industry that thrives on exploitation, decadence, and the erasure of accountability under the guise of rebellion.

Jamian is not the punk icon the article portrays her to be. A face the appears weathered and aged beyond her 37 years. Her public image unraveling, marked by addiction, disordered eating, and trauma, is interpreted as an extension of her art practice rather than a sign of deep systemic and personal harm. This framing is possible only because of her whiteness. Were she not white, her actions would be pathologized, not celebrated. Her chaos is excused because it fits within a tradition of white artists being allowed to perform dysfunction without consequence. This dysfunction is not revolutionary; it is merely a symptom of privilege unchecked by the accountability others are forced to bear.

The Vulture article’s frequent name-dropping speaks volumes about the art world’s obsession with survival through proximity to powerful men. Figures like Kanye West, Matthew Barney, and Gavin Brown appear as almost mythological entities within the piece—cultural placeholders meant to lend legitimacy to Jamian’s narrative. This reliance on male power brokers underscores how deeply the art world depends on patriarchal structures. Jamian’s trajectory, like so many others, is shaped by these dynamics: her chaos exists within a system that requires adjacency to recognizable male figures for validation. Her identity as an artist is inseparable from the men who orbit her, and yet this dependency is framed as autonomy.

This permissiveness afforded to Jamian and her contemporaries does not extend to artists like me. In 2020, Jamian spread a baseless rumor that I ran “Cancel Art Galleries,” following an online clash with Mathieu Malouf. That falsehood found its way into Artnet’s Wet Paint column, written by Nate Freeman, who later stumbled drunkenly into Vanity Fair. I was framed as a pariah—a neurodivergent Black woman from a working-class background, not thin, not biracial. To their whisper networks, I was reduced to an under-the-breath slur: a nigger.

This dynamic is not unique to me; it is the art world’s modus operandi. Figures like Kenny Schachter and Jerry Saltz weaponize their platforms to uphold these inequities, wielding power to silence dissent and reward complicity. Jamian’s dysfunction is romanticized because it aligns with their vision of the tortured white genius—a figure whose privilege shields them from the consequences of their own actions. Her public self-destruction is not an act of rebellion but a reflection of the industry’s addiction to narratives of white fragility disguised as brilliance.

The article’s comparison of Jamian to Lee Scratch Perry—a pioneering dub legend—is not only inaccurate but deeply insulting. Perry’s work was characterized by technical mastery, cultural innovation, and an unmistakable Jamaican ethos. He was a pioneer whose influence shaped entire genres of music. Jamian’s output, by contrast, reflects financial mismanagement, unchecked privilege, and a fragmented, oversaturated visual culture. It is the art of a mind fractured by social media—a reflection of hyper visibility, not originality.

The absurdity of this system is perhaps best exemplified by the art world’s obsession with self-congratulation. Figures like Jamian are framed as the epitome of “cool”—an anamorphic spirit, morphing between Ron Jeremy and Julian Casablancas, bestowing the downtown elite with the illusion of countercultural rebellion. This illusion feeds the industry’s myth of authenticity, a narrative upheld by publications desperate to find meaning in a world that has become its own parody. The art world no longer seeks truth, rebellion, or innovation. It seeks spectacle, and Jamian embodies this spectacle to its fullest.

Meanwhile, Black professionals like Antwaun Sargent at Gagosian and Ebony Haynes at David Zwirner must embody perfection. Their presence is used to signal progress in institutions that have historically excluded and exploited people like them. They carry the burden of being symbols of institutional redemption, even as the systemic inequities they navigate remain intact. Their careers hinge on maintaining a carefully curated image of success, while Jamian and her peers are granted impunity to implode, fail, and still be celebrated.

The art world, as it stands, is a spectacle of inequity. It rewards those who can perform dysfunction and commodify destruction, while punishing those who fall outside its narrow definitions of genius. It is a culture of cannibalism, where individuals destroy one another for a fleeting moment of relevance at a blue-chip gallery. This is not a world of meritocracy or artistic integrity; it is a theater of survival, with whiteness as its protagonist.

The Vulture article is not a celebration of artistic innovation; it is a defense of failure. It seeks to reframe dysfunction as brilliance and chaos as intentionality. But beneath the surface lies a system in decay, clinging desperately to the myth of its own relevance. What we are left with is not art, but the illusion of art—a desperate attempt to uphold the myth of white genius in the face of an increasingly disillusioned audience.