The Whitney Biennial Should Admit That Emilie Gossiaux Wants to Fuck Their Dog | Jenneral HQ 🌠

The Whitney Biennial Should Admit That Emilie Gossiaux Wants to Fuck Their Dog

18 May, 2026

content warnings: human and anthro nudity, discussion of bestiality, modern art

Credit where it's due: it is genuinely, unironically baller for the Whitney museum to make the exhibit about how a disabled artist wants to fuck their dog the first one that people see when they attend the prestigious Whitney Biennial, which is their bi-annual showcase of new and emerging American talents. You know, the one that's supposed to be a barometer of where America is at these days.

Unfortunately, they fail to commit to the bit, and then the art world commentariat falls flat on their face too. Like, here is how one art critic at ArtReview describes it:

Visitors first encounter Emilie Louise Gossiaux’s Kong Play (2025) – a hundred or so small, brightly coloured snowman-shaped ceramics arranged on a low two-tiered pedestal. These sculptures are modelled after Kong chew toys, a tribute to the artist’s guide dog (Gossiaux lost their vision in a bicycle accident in 2012). Accompanying Kong Play are variously titled ballpoint pen and crayon drawings by Gossiaux that depict the artist playing with a jaunty, sometimes bipedal, white canine. The exhibition thus opens tenderly – without fanfare, without friction.

And another, from artnet:

Emilie Louise Gossiaux’s tribute to their deceased seeing-eye dog opens the show on the fifth floor, a suite of winsome drawings of the artist with their pooch, plus a landscape of ceramic dog toys meant to evoke “doggy heaven” for their lost helper... As an opening gambit for the biennial, it signals a “sincerity first” credo, as William Van Meter wrote yesterday; art that promises a vicarious sense of emotional connection over impressive form—the look of conceptual art, but with concepts swapped out for feelings.1

Here's one more, from a 4Columns reporter who proclaims this installation to be one of their favourites from the entire 50-person show:

It’s an installation of drawings and sculptures by Emilie Louise Gossiaux, made in memory of (and, as they say, in collaboration with) their guide dog, London, who died last September. On a pedestal on the floor are one hundred ceramic replicas of London’s favorite chew toy. Surrounding this are eleven smallish framed drawings depicting person and dog snuggling, cavorting, their bodies commingling. The drawings are naïve in style, their lines incidental, and they poignantly capture the soul connection between a human and the canine who makes their life possible. 1

And here's the little placard that the Whitney has by the exhibit, if you're just going in blind without having already read a bunch of reviews:

Placard Text: Emilie Louise Gossiaux often explores the interdependence of humans and animals in their work and regards their late guide dog, London, as an equal collaborator. When London's health started deteriorating in 2024, Gossiaux began working on the one-hundred hand-built ceramic sculptures that make up Kong Play. By producing multiples of their dog's favorite chew toy, they imagined a pleasure-filled afterlife for London, who died in September 2025.

So everyone's saying the same thing: It's a blind person's tender and sincere tribute to London, their beloved, recently passed guide dog.

From this, you really don't get the sense that Emilie Gossiaux wants to fuck their dog.

Gossiaux's Recent Body of Work<br>Let's take a step back and look at what Gossiaux is trying to say with their body of work, which for the last five years has been focused on their relationship with London, their dog. Their own words about the Biennial exhibit (emphasis mine):

London, to me, was more than just my guide dog. I thought of her as my mother or my child. So it was very cyclical. And sometimes it can take a couple of years for a guide dog and their human to feel like they are in a marriage together, that is kind of like an arranged marriage that your trainer sets up for you , and you have to work with that and build on that, until it starts to feel like you're in a true partnership—like a spouse.

"The Marriage of Hand and Paw", 2025 (detail). Gossiaux is blind and draws using a rubber pad beneath the page to feel the lines by touch.

In an interview with cultured mag, they elaborate:

The drawings that I was making towards the end of London’s life were exploring the afterlife, and also about what it was like to care for London. The weight of it and the sadness of it. Saying goodbye to such an important person and reflecting on the connection we have. She came into my life and completely changed it for the better.

They also talk about the texture of that relationship, how they navigate it and feel it as a blind person:

The way I experience the world, I see with my two hands. Touching London is kind of fragmented. My hand is on her tongue, and my other hand is...