Date of Award
Spring 5-6-2016
Degree Name
Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA)
Restricted/Unrestricted
Unrestricted
Abstract
My partner and collaborator Callaway Fox and I use queer surrealist installation, craft practices, and performance in order to address queer and disabled temporality, articulating our experiences as disabled queer femme artists through abstracted and literal exploration of femme bodies in space. In performance and installation works Hospital Performance: Part I and Hospital Performance: Part II, we responded to our experience of marginalization, medical malpractice, and emotional isolation, ultimately exploring queer and disabled temporality through queer surrealism. Hand-poured scented candles became metaphors for queer and disabled bodies, and along with other craft practices used in this work, are a part of a larger context of queer femme appropriation of craft and femme aesthetics. Medical equipment served as witnesses to trauma, and we reclaimed these objects as a way to come to terms with the severity of my illness and its treatment. Through performance, we blended reality with elements of femme camp and drag, using our bodies as direct evidence of our experiences. Influenced by contemporary queer artists Caitlin Rose Sweet, Mars Hobrecker, Leah James, and Mindy Rose Schwartz, as well as the historical queer surrealist precedent of Frida Kahlo, we are interested in continuing to explore the intersectionality of our identities and the strength of queer femmeness through installation and performance work.
Recommended Citation
Shpuntoff, Moya, "Wax Bodies: Candles, Queerness, & Taking Up Space" (2016). Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers. 3.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/bfa/3