This Wednesday night, TikTok sensation and performance artist Vita Kari will crawl into a cramped, pink box and apologize for 24 hours straight. Not that Kari has done anything wrong—it’s just their latest stunt, “Apology Box,” christening a group show Kari curated at 806 Dorado Projects in Los Angeles on July 16. “Pride hit different this year,” the nonbinary artist remarked over the phone. “We need an apology, but we’re not going to get one, so we’re just gonna have to give it to ourselves.”
That got Kari contemplating apologies. They’re not the first artist to explore forgiveness. Caravaggio made David con testa di Golia (1610) to gain papal clemency for the murder of Ranuccio Tommasoni. Peter Santino started his ‘sorry’ sandpaintings 385 years later. The personal apology as we know it arose from The Enlightenment, critic Peter Smith noted, and the now-ubiquitous ‘public apology’ as we know it only sprouted from social media last decade. Kari thinks experts will consider these ring-lit admissions “cultural artifacts.”
“The performance of accountability is something I’m really exploring in this work,” they said. “I’m not standing on 10 toes necessarily saying anything directly, I’m just interested in investigating.”
Kari noticed a downturn in corporate support this Pride—which they traced back to AnheuserBush’s exemplary non-apology after Bud Light sponsored a TikTok video with content creator Dylan Mulvaney in 2023 (Right wing movements attacked the beer brand for working with an openly trans creator, while the left criticized the brand for failing to stand with and protect Mulvany). “Ever since then, brands are nervous,” Kari said. On the other hand, concerns that ‘rainbow capitalism’ overshadows Pride’s revolutionary origins remain.
Though Kari notes that saying “sorry” too much may neuters its meaning. “I abuse the word,” Kari joked. “I’ll bump into an inanimate object on the street and say sorry.” Now, action’s in fashion. Absent outside support spurred a mutual aid renaissance this Pride, at least in LA.
“Apology Box” marks Kari’s first true endurance feat, though you’d be forgiven for thinking they’d done one before. In 2020, the Otis College graduate opened an experimental art space, Vitawood, in West Adams, LA. In 2022, they started making shortform social media videos. Then, in 2023, Kari initiated their viral “craziest thing” series, wherein one element of their surroundings always proves to be printed out. If you know them for nothing else, it may be the phrase “The craziest thing about being creative is…” that starts each video. These quick flicks invite repeat views and engagement. Fans comment whether they’ve guessed correctly. In a way, Kari cracked virality as a medium.
The ascendant artist gave their first live performance at Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, cramming themselves in a clear can and begging bystanders to pour water on them. The cops arrived soon after it started—then again the next year, during “Close The Door,” another ABMB caper where Kari performed private acts in a cage, raising awareness about America’s lacking public bathrooms. Kari has increasingly flexed their mastery over virality with intensifying IRL stunts.
Last Fall’s “On the Wall” remains Kari’s longest performance to date. There, Kari taped themselves to a West Hollywood facade for four hours, and couched it online as a three-day endeavor, coming clean days later. “There’s a reason I wanted to do [Apology Box] in a gallery—to have the full 24 hours,” Kari said. They prepared the project’s pitch deck well before Dorado 806 Projects offered their 24-hour residency, culminating with an exhibition. For that, Kari tapped eight materially adventurous queer artists, from Sophie Rossler’s neons to Perry Picasshoe’s ice sculptures for “UNSORRY,” a show probing “the space in between unapologetic and apologetic—this weird limbo.” Kari will leave their bubblegum cell an hour into the reception.
Sophie Rossler, Quin Leslie, Emily Yin, Joaquin Stacey-Calle, Vita Kari, Andre Atkins, Santoni Kina, and Perry Picasshoe.
Photo by Sean Behr
Staying awake and talking for a day straight has required some training. Kari’s also been busy fielding apologies to read, and soliciting donations for gender-affirming care. Once that fundraiser’s done, donations will benefit a DACA renewal fund. “Apology Box” got postponed due to ICE raids in Los Angeles last month.
They’ve now received over 100 submissions. “Some of them are hot tea,” they said. “Some of them are also hilarious.” Others are heartrending, relatable, reminding viewers that the apologies we never deliver because it’s too painful or harmful hold the most weight. By reading such apologies anonymously, names omitted, Kari offers participants an impossible absolution.
For a brief moment, Kari was communicating with the Guinness World Records association to solidify “Apology Box” as the longest-ever public apology. While Guinness has since ghosted them, Kari’s still heeding their guidelines, arranging to keep diligent records that prove they only took the permitted five minutes each hour for bathroom breaks and snacks—gummy worms and Sweet Tart Ropes. Kari realized their favorite candy, Sour Patch Kids, might irritate their throat.
It only takes an hour to read 100 apologies. To keep talking, Kari will recite their own, while embellishing trash from their snacks, continuing their ‘bedazzling my girlfriend’s trash’ series.
Kari will also have a printer near their confines, naturally, to print out pixelated iPhone selfies and apologies, which they’ll then shred to make glitchy paper mache artworks that will evoke queer censorship, emphasize the need for real change after an apology, and “keep my brain from exploding,” Kari giggled, nervously. Tune into this week’s YouTube livestream and cheer them on.
