I AM CURIOUS MASCULINE

Attempting to tear away the inverted commas that so often transform ‘masculinity’ into an explanatory cliché, "I Am Curious Masculine" splices together a series of images that reflect men’s material practices and offer the male body as metaphor for the experience of masculinization.

After all, it is the visual language of male sexuality that we have so potently inherited as a beacon for orienting our masculine journeys. As Victor Seidler explains, “a real challenge to liberal individualism involves not only challenging the image that is offered of the subject as a consumer encouraged to identify with the commodities they own, but also in understanding how precarious that individuality is” in the face of the collective.

Gender identity formation can in turn be characterized—perhaps most generally—as a struggle for balance between the individual and the society which he lives.

How do we define what we want for ourselves in relation to gender ideals as we seek to reconcile those dueling forces? Can the remix of image and physical object speak to the performative fluidity of male identity? It is this juxtaposition of the liquid process of gender identity formation and the physical means with which we architect stable identities that is the driving force of this work and, hopefully, the commanding power of it.

Gallery: Vera List Center
Year: 2013