The Nonbinary/Genderqueer Body in Art and Society

Description

This paper charts a trajectory of defiance, from turning criticism into a personal art practice, and my
reasons for doing so. Embracing the public rejection of my anti-normative character designs and
drawings, which did not appeal to the majority of hetero-male viewers I once shared certain popular
art sites with, I originally used the medium of comix as a means of exploring my own queered
aesthetics of gender and ambiguity.
Later, mass online public eruptions such as the ‘Comicsgate’ and ‘Gamergate’ fiascos – hate
campaigns against creators and characters who were not white, male, and straight – inspired me to
actively take on this culture of embedded normativity and self-proclaimed supremacy, both through
drawing, and my own nascent performance practice, in which the artist’s own body becomes a
mediating agent between the gender poles.
I conclude with a few facts and figures in support of a gender spectrum, not a binary, and I also
analyse the problems inherent in all forms of taxonomical reductionism where human ‘types’ are
postulated as hard and fast realities, based upon the arbitrary judgements of both hierarchies and
majorities.

Period	31 Mar 2021
Event title	INGEAR Conference
Event type	Conference
Location	Dundee, United KingdomShow on map