Performing Genders, Performing Selves

Lyle Ashton Harris, Constructs #10 - #13  1989

Harris strikes four different poses. His stance and gestures might remind us of classical sculpture or ballet, his hand on his hip, or his feet extending out as if in a ballet position, the large net bow reminiscent of a tutu. Harris has said he has used self-portraiture since the 1980s ‘as a tool for embodiment, to reimagine the self while looking at the past, to meditate on the present as a way to conceptualize the future and rethink our understanding of identity.’ Made at the height of the AIDS pandemic, Constructs #10 – #13 was for Harris ‘almost an aggressive assertion of sex-positiveness... it was about challenging the policing of the... queer black body.’

Gallery label, November 2022

Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #24  1991

Aguilar explained, ‘My work is a collaboration between the sitters and myself... Hopefully the universal elements in the work can be recognised by other individuals’ communities and can initiate the viewer to new experiences about gays, lesbians, and people of color.’ For the artist, the viewer ‘is as vulnerable as the nude person because as they view the images, they are hopefully seeing images of themselves.’

Gallery label, November 2022

Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #14  1991

Clothed/Unclothed #14 shows the academic Luz Calvo, first in jeans and shirt, and then naked with a sticker across their genitals stating ‘FUCK YOUR GENDER. QUEER NATION’. Queer Nation is an LGBTQIA activist organisation founded in 1990 in New York City, known for its confrontational tactics and slogans giving visibility to people identifying as queer. ‘Fuck your gender’ works both as a rallying cry against traditional gender roles and as a playful invitation to engage in queer encounters.

Gallery label, November 2022

Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #30  1994

Aguilar often turned the camera on herself to explore her identity, exposing her own vulnerabilities and inner conflicts. She extended this sensitivity to the people she photographed, portraying their vulnerable and intimate sides while retaining a direct and candid quality, even when carefully constructed in the studio. The series Clothed/Unclothed 1990–4 show people from Aguilar’s social circles, including the LGBTQIA community, the Chicanx art community, academics and other professionals in Los Angeles. She collaborated with her sitters to explore universal themes around the construction and representation of identity that relate to queer forms of community and kinship.

Gallery label, November 2022

Lynn Hershman Leeson, Roberta Construction Chart #1  1975, printed 2009

Lynn Hershman Leeson created, performed and documented an alter ego, Roberta Breitmore from 1973 to 1978 to ‘focus on the blurriness between fiction and reality’. During her four-year existence, Roberta Breitmore had a bank account and library card, rented an apartment and went on dates. She did not plan for the character to be so developed but ‘when you start to define how you make somebody real, she needs to be fleshed out and have a history.’ Roberta Construction Chart #1 gives detailed instructions on how to create Roberta’s appearance. It doubles as a visualisation of ‘femininity as masquerade’, highlighting the tropes and traits that tend to be associated with femininity.

Gallery label, November 2022

Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #34  1994

Foregrounding care and trust in her art practice, Aguilar created collaborative and reciprocal relationships with her sitters. Rejecting traditional family portraiture, the subjects remain intertwined as they hold our gaze. Bodies are close and connected, both clothed and unclothed, revealing their deep connection as a unit.

Gallery label, November 2022

Lynn Hershman Leeson, Lay Off & Leave Me Alone  1976; printed 1978

Roberta Breitmore was a fictional person, created, enacted and documented by Lynn Hershman from 1974 to 1978. During her four-year existence Roberta had a bank account and library card, attended weight watchers and rented an apartment. Roberta Construction Chart #1 gives detailed instructions on how to create Roberta’s appearance. In Roberta’s Body Language Chart, Roberta is photographed during a psychiatric session with annotations interpreting her body language. Hershman later recalled: ‘With the completion of Roberta, I finally closed the chapter on that idea of the single woman – Roberta and me – as victim.’

Gallery label, June 2011

Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #4  1990

Clothed/Unclothed #4 and #34 depict the photographer, artist and social activist Willie Middlebrook 1957–2012, a friend of Aguilar’s, solo and with his two children.

Gallery label, November 2022

VALIE EXPORT, Action Pants: Genital Panic  1969

This set of posters was produced to commemorate an action performed by VALIE EXPORT in Munich in 1968. She entered a cinema wearing trousers with a triangle of fabric removed at the crotch and walked between the rows of seated viewers. Her action was intended to confront the cliché of women’s cinematic representation as passive objects. The posters were then fly-posted in the streets. ‘I wanted to be provocative, to provoke, but also aggression was part of my intention...I sought to change the people’s way of seeing and thinking’, the artist has said.

Gallery label, July 2008

Laura Aguilar, Clothed/Unclothed #28  1994

Aguilar shows us how the camera can be used to imagine different ways of being. Her images specifically counter white, heteronormative, able-bodied images of women that proliferate. As a Chicana photographer and video artist, Aguilar used the camera to explore herself and the intersection of Chicanx, Latinx, immigrant and queer communities in Los Angeles in the 1980s and 1990s.

Gallery label, November 2022

Lynn Hershman Leeson, Check  1974

Lynn Hershman Leeson, Roberta’s Body Language Chart  1978; printed 2009

In Roberta’s Body Language Chart, Leeson’s alter ego, Roberta Breitmore is photographed during a real psychiatric session. The annotations interpret her gestures and postures. Leeson carefully constructed Roberta’s character: ‘She had a different background. She was younger than I was. She went to therapy because she was broke and lonely and kept having negative experiences.’ Eventually Roberta began to blur the lines between performance, alter ego, and the artist’s everyday life: ‘In fact, she’s more real than I am, because I couldn’t get credit cards, and I couldn’t get other artifacts of life and the records that she easily acquired. So for me, it was kind of just living her life.’

Gallery label, November 2022

Lynn Hershman Leeson, Untitled (Roberta’s Signature in Guest Book)  1975