Final Project: Artist references

In looking for artist references, I’m curious in rituals and performances as it resonates with the notion of gender perfomativity as postulated by Butler. The constant need to adjust one’s ‘queerness’ to fit into certain spaces is a ritual in itself, and a performance as they have to put on a persona.

I’m inspired by Sulaiman Esa’s Rajaah: Taman Duka Lara (The Endangered Garden), a mixed media installation on Western cultural hegemony encroaching into ‘Eastern’ cultures; and Arnaud Pottier and Timothee Mironneau’s Odyssey, a projection mapping art installation at Singapore Night Festival 2018.

 

The installation will have the Kaaba, a sacred black cube that Muslims faced when praying, in the middle and viewers circumambulate around it.

I’m planning on creating motion sensors that allows the installation to notice anyone approaching and once it past a certain point, the videos will start to play, or stops playing, or switches to another video. This is to represent the different ‘performances’ that queer people perform in various spaces:

  1. Video starts to play as viewers get close
    • When they’re around people they trust, they start to express their queer selves more
  2. Video gets blurred
    • When in doubt, hide some aspects of your identity
  3. Video switches to another video
    • Put on a completely different persona when interacting with
  4. Video stops playing
    • Completely shuts themselves off non-queer people
Rajaah: Taman Duka Lara. Mixed media installation. Sulaiman Esa, 2011.

 

Post navigation

Leave a Reply

Skip to toolbar