Begum is a celebration of the playfulness of fashion and gender performance in queer communities—where more, is more.
Series
Begum
Created
2017
Medium
Acrylic, mixed media on canvas
Dimensions
30 in. x 48 in.
2017
Rinzen
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
30 in. x 48 in.
Private Collection
2017
Govind
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
30 in. x 48 in.
Private Collection
2017
Fernando
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
30 in. x 48 in.
Private Collection
2017
Veer
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
30 in. x 48 in.
Private Collection
2017
Mustafa
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
30 in. x 48 in.
Private Collection
2017
Persaud
Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
30 in. x 48 in.
Private Collection
―
For queer and trans folk, non-normative performance of gender can be dangerous, even fatal. In an ongoing conversation with my previous work that explores the cross sections of dress, hybridity and difference, I ask: What do we gain--and what do we lose--with our sartorial decisions? How do normative (cis, hetero-patriarchal) social systems require us to perform gender in limited ways? How can we understand queerness and fashion as strategy, and not a fixed identity?
The aesthetic choices I have made in Begum develop from an interest in maximalism and anti-chromophobia. Colour and excess can function as tactics and methods of survival. These figures liberate themselves from two dimensional thinking. They quite literally cannot be contained by the canvas.
Begum offers a vision of post-patriarchal celebration; discarding codes of conformity and hegemonic gender ideologies in favour of play.
More, is more.