‘I announced, “No memoirs, no comment.” I decided that the only way I would be known from then on was through my music, through pictures, and through art.’ Grace Jones, I’ll Never Write my Memoirs, (2015)

Dr Hannah Yelin examines Jones’ preoccupation with the performance of celebrity. In her ironically titled memoir, I’ll Never Write my Memoirs, Jones appears to seek to set herself apart from the derogatory (and gendered) mass of generalised celebrity. The memoir frames Jones as, above all, an artist. Drawing upon the credibility of her proximity to and relationships with cultural contemporaries such as Andy Warhol reframes her pop-stardom as a form of performance art: a self-reflexive, postmodern exercise in ‘doing’ pop-stardom, at the same time as being a bid for success in the music industry. The memoir constructs the mechanics of pop-stardom as creative opportunities for the construction of a wider artistic project. As she states in the memoir, unlike hers, ‘most pop performance didn’t take into account pop art.’ It is not simply that she is a famous pop-star, but that she is constructing a performance about being a famous pop-star. Thus, she is presented as ‘doing’ celebrity rather than, or as well as, being a celebrity.

This work has been presented at conferences at Edinburgh College of Art and Oxford University,

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