top of page

#Rebel Selves

#Rebel Selves explores creative methods that could be used to critique and subvert idealised heteronormative gender expectations in selfies and portraiture through ideas of entanglement, camouflage and parade. The project comprises an installation, self-portraits, collaborative contemporary dance performances and videos, online and IRL workshops and a smartphone app, all of which create performative spaces in which visitors can create queer(ed) selfies that rebel against gender and beauty norms. In a series of IRL workshops, play with gestures wearing installation costumes (top) or make masks (middle) and use them to take selfies in the installation. I also ran online workshops that use a specially developed smartphone app and filters that blend and distort selfies inspired by the installation (bottom). Images were shared on @rebelselves instagram page.

bois of isolation

boi emerged in 2020 as an Instagram-based collaboration between artist and academic, Dawn, and academic and activist geographer, AC. Within a wider project, Making Feminist Spaces, which explored feminist practices of care and survival under pandemic lockdown, boi aimed to create a platform for sharing selfies that queer the gender binary. Using online workshops and conversations, we asked participants to explore whether and how selfies could disrupt dominant visual representations of the gender binary. We asked how queering gender binaries link to the placing and spatial organisation of selfies and whether selfie-taking practices help queer, not only the gender binary, but the very notion of the ‘self’? To allow for a range of gender expressions, we asked for up to four selfies that queer the gender binary during pandemic lockdown. We wanted to defy the idea of a single, coherent identity (required by social media platforms to track users and gather data more effectively) and avoid pairs of images that might infer a gender binary or the ‘before’ and ‘after’ transformation common in advertisements. Contributors were asked to consider why they chose gestures, objects and locations for their selfies and to reflect on their feelings during the process. The first workshop, on 16th February 2021, was attended mainly by students who responded to a call from a university’s LGBTQI research group. The second workshop, on 8th April 2021, was held as part of a conference attended by academics and PhD students in the arts. Selfies were shared on Instagram: @boisofisolation

Recycled Relics