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Abstract:
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I position my work at the intersections of identity and form . More specifically , I’m interested in how and why an individual’s physical appearance and demeanor become communicative and are then interpreted . Socially , it seems that we still often operate in ways that honor categorical distinctions between people , meaning for instance , that a man is something and a woman is something different from a man . Well , what if a woman can become a man or be read as a man simply by a change of clothes or through the addition of simple hormone injections ? If this is possible , what does it mean for the terms that were previously understood to be fairly stable ? Why does my body mean something or have to mean something , and if it doesn’t have meaning , what is it that it conveys ? I live in a body that has shifted from something that was labeled female at birth to something that is now read as male . This adjustment has radically undermined my relationship to the blunt categorical expectations that partition the social face of our psychic lives . I’m unconvinced that the interpretation of my self is generally concurrent with the interpretation of my form . Too often , I believe the latter restricts the potential of the former . This is particularly evident in my unique position as a practically unreadable gender . My physical cues point to a familiar position within the gender binary that I don’t identify with . This limits my ability to engage with even members of my own queer community without resorting to the act of disclosure . I’m also curious about the flip side of this problem when , upon disclosure , the binary’s seam opens to be revealed as faceted , possessing multiple , unnamable spaces that reflect uncertainty back into the ideas of man and woman and render gender into a flexible field of characteristics that individuals use for many things , as opposed to simply inhabit . My work addresses this potential break between font and legibility , gesture and etiquette , the familiar and the possible . My portrait of the body and gender is incidental not substantive . |