PERFORMING FEMINITY
PERFORMING FEMINITY
Between Performance and Intimacy
Entre performance du féminin et intimité
Between Performance
and Intimacy
Entre performance du
féminin et intimité
Drag queens and ballroom dancers share a common practice: staging characters of exaggerated femininity. The series Performing Femininity traces the connections between these explicit constructions of gender and the performers' interior lives. Studio photography functions here as a laboratory of intimacy, where each subject poses and reveals, through interview, how they construct their performance of femininity through lived experience. Behind the apparent caricature of these "hyper-women" lie concealed singularities. Each testimony is unique and irreducible. Yet invariably, these cis men and women, along with trans individuals, joyfully explode categorical boundaries and invite us to deconstruct gender's performativity. Performing Femininity comprises a collection of studio portraits with accompanying texts, as well as performance documentation captured in situ.
With the performers : La Grande Dame, Keiona, Gigi Revlon, Nomai, Alice Psycho, Kreature, Manly B, Sublym.
Drag queens and ballroom dancers share a common practice: staging characters of exaggerated femininity. The series Performing Femininity traces the connections between these explicit constructions of gender and the performers' interior lives. Studio photography functions here as a laboratory of intimacy, where each subject poses and reveals, through interview, how they construct their performance of femininity through lived experience. Behind the apparent caricature of these "hyper-women" lie concealed singularities. Each testimony is unique and irreducible. Yet invariably, these cis men and women, along with trans individuals, joyfully explode categorical boundaries and invite us to deconstruct gender's performativity. Performing Femininity comprises a collection of studio portraits with accompanying texts, as well as performance documentation captured in situ.
With the performers : La Grande Dame, Keiona, Gigi Revlon, Nomai, Alice Psycho, Kreature, Manly B, Sublym.
Excerpts from interviews with the performers
more texts upon request
Excerpts from interviews
with the performers
more texts upon request
"When I go onstage, I reach for what's inside me, but also for something imaginary, an ideal. There are so many ways to find your femininity. It could be an image of the ideal woman I had when I was young, or little gestures from my sisters, my mother, or a model."
"Drag gave me clarity, the possibility of being masculine...if I want to be. No one can force me to be masculine or feminine. I'm no longer afraid to tell people even casual lovers that I do drag and that I sometimes blend masculinity and femininity."
"It's an inner femininity that comes out even more during performance. The femininity mst deeply rooted in the body emerges even stronger."
"Ballroom helped my feminine architecture grow day by day. "
"I blend the feminine, the masculine, and the animal. "
"Curiously, my femininity is most present when there's more intensity in my face. The stronger it is... the more softness there is. When there's strength, a lot of femininity comes out in me. "
"When I go onstage, I reach for what's inside me, but also for something imaginary, an ideal. There are so many ways to find your femininity. It could be an image of the ideal woman I had when I was young, or little gestures from my sisters, my mother, or a model."
"Drag gave me clarity, the possibility of being masculine...if I want to be. No one can force me to be masculine or feminine. I'm no longer afraid to tell people even casual lovers that I do drag and that I sometimes blend masculinity and femininity."
"It's an inner femininity that comes out even more during performance. The femininity mst deeply rooted in the body emerges even stronger."
"Ballroom helped my feminine architecture grow day by day. "
"I blend the feminine, the masculine, and the animal. "
"Curiously, my femininity is most present when there's more intensity in my face. The stronger it is... the more softness there is. When there's strength, a lot of femininity comes out in me. "
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WEBSITE BY ANTONIN FARRUGIA
WEBSITE BY ANTONIN FARRUGIA