Transgender arts and culture, summer 2024

 There are lots of cultural events and art shows with a trans flavour this summer. I won't be able to comment on them all in one post so here to start with are the two big ones ... and a more personal note of interest.

 

The Expressionists, London

Let's start with Tate Modern in London, which has a major exhibition on "The Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and the Blue Rider", which I went to see with a couple of friends in May. I'm not sure it was really my thing (and the £22 entry fee certainly wasn't!) but the record of the crossdressing performances of Alexander Sacharoff certainly were (Room 5: performing gender). Marianne Werefkin's striking 1909 portrait of Sacharoff is one of the exhibition's icons.

 

 

The exhibition describes these artists' gender outlook as follows:

Traditionally, theatre and performance offered safe environments for the exploration of sexuality and gender. Performers could switch gender and power roles, and engage with transgressive themes. Artist and patron Werefkin was attracted to the free arts of street theatre and popular entertainment for their freedom of expression and potential to disrupt the highly regulated social structures women were confined to.

Werefkin experimented with expressionist painting while also grappling with questions of identity. This included navigating the legal and social barriers of gender inequality. Her privileged upbringing and financial independence allowed Werefkin to assume a position of power, acting as patron and supporter of the arts – a field traditionally monopolised by men. In this period, such women were given the pejorative label ‘manwoman’ to denote their being ‘unnatural’, members of a ‘third sex’. This perspective was critically explored in the writing of contemporary philosopher and minority rights activist Johannes Holzmann.

Resenting gender binaries, Werefkin stated: ‘I am not a man, I am not a woman, I am I.’ She shared affinities with artists challenging traditional gender roles. This is reflected in her support of performer Sacharoff. Presenting androgynously both on and off stage, Sacharoff explored gender fluidity through new styles of performance that activated form through free movement. Believing that dance resembled music or painting, Sacharoff said: ‘In the art of dance the body must be an elaborate instrument capable of expressing the soul. In this sense, it must be as valid as the word, the sound and the colour’. Performance was central to both Werefkin and Sacharoff’s investigations and constructions of self-identity.

 

Some photos of Sacharoff's performances are here:

 

To be honest, though, it was August Macke's paintings of ladies enjoying the displays in milliners shops that appealed most to me!

Venice Biennale, Italy

The Venice Biennale is a contemporary art exhibition that dates back to 1895. The theme for 2024 is "strangers everywhere", focusing on art outside the mainstream, such as the art of lesser known cultures and queer art. The connection between the words strange and queer here is not accidental.

Trans or gender varied works and artists include:

trans man Rindon Johnson; 

non-binary artist Shalom Kufakwatenzi;

Electric Dress and A Sculpture for Trans Women by Puppies Puppies; 

Black Men in Dress by photographer Sabelo Mlangeni;

the mixed-gender, cigar-chomping skirt-sporting traditional Ekeke figure by Violeta Quispe;

and a degree of gender mixing in the Fashion Girl sculpture by Taylor Nkomo.

 

Other queer art at the Biennale that seems especially noted by the art press includes works by:

Omar Mismar from Lebanon and his paintings of male couples in the style of Greek mosaics;

Louis Fratino from the USA and his modern gay take on Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon;

Xiyadie from China, a gay farmer, explicit yet not, who mingles nature with humans aroused;

Salman Toor from Pakistan and his scenes of everyday life in the queer community.

 

Nearer to home

I find that my brother-in-law is actually a keen collector of contemporary art, a lot of which is quite fun (such as ceramic space invaders by Invader, who had a major exhibition in Paris earlier this year). He doesn't necessarily keep any item long but aims to sell it on. But he was quite excited about a piece by everyone's favourite crossdressing contemporary potter, Grayson Perry. It must have cost him a lot so I hope he gets a good return on his investment! But he was saying what he thought of Perry, aka Claire, and just accepted the alter ego as a necessary part of the artist's persona and production. The art world is very accepting of gender difference, as I found myself when participating in shows as Sue and I'm glad my brother in law is no bigot, which is more than can be said for the rest of my family.

 

Queer art from early twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries, then. More soon. 

A dip in the archives

I haven't dipped in the archives for a while but, for those interested in Grayson Perry, I saw work of his at the Photographers Gallery in London in 2018 with my friend Ange: Photography exhibition.

I also saw his less enthusiastically reviewed show, Provincial Punk, in Margate in 2015. Here's the review of that exhibition in The Independent.

Sue x