Behind the Curtain

September 2022

‘ B E H I N D T H E C U R T A I N ’ – my final project for Luiza Folgeratti’s Photography and Performance class in the third semester of my graduate degree in Visual and Media Anthropology – chronicles my practical and theoretical research exploring the question of how one can approach the visual and/or embodied representation of ‘gendered ways of being’ in photo-performative settings in ways that do not perpetuate gazed and gendered looking practices.

The project included an interview with my non-binary sibling, Josette, “Jo” on their experience of defying normative gender conventions. In response to our conversation, Jo and I collaborated on a photo-performance where we explored what it would look like to symbolically remove gender-signifying language from our bodies. In response to this collaboration, I conducted a further solo photo-performance to synthesize my conclusions on what liberation ‘looks like’ in queer and feminist art contexts and to address my personal experience of a ‘gendered way of life’.