Body Politics
Provoc8, Nomadic Gallery, Lubbock, Texas
Friday, October 3, 2014
As part of the Provoc8 series of exhibits hosted in a nomadic truck gallery Body Politics provides a format for discussions that typically do not take place in what has been ranked as the 2nd most conservative city in the United States.
Invited to participate I developed a new set of works drawing from several conflicting ideas. Judith Butler asserts that gender is performative action not physical body, especially since the body is now mutable. Pairing these ideas with the homogenizing standardization of high modernism, which strip identity markers in favor of a universal experience, and the concept of “portable identity” as potentially detached from physicality and geography makes a compelling argument for the dissolution of the physical self. Yet it seems the body has, contradictorily, become more heavily enmeshed in identity issues and politics.
