A Domestic Performance is a series that explores the disruption between female domesticity and the queer body. The work pays homage to Chantal Akerman’s work relating to the radical potential of women rejecting their traditional gender roles.
The series explores how the gender binary clashes within a queer body occupying in a domestic space of isolation. The work uses the aestheticism of Chantal Akerman’s films Je, tu, il, elle (1972) and Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) as a framework for radicalizing these conditions. The photographs are comprised of staged self-portraits in traditionally feminized spaces in the home. These images represent the performance of the series, which illustrates how gender norms and expectations affect a person’s psyche, especially as a person who has been deemed female in the eyes of society but does not conform to the traditional gender binary. This can be seen in the details of how one operates, moves and speaks in relation to domestic spaces such as the bedroom, the kitchen, the living space and the bathroom. Additionally, the film operates as the disruption created to express the difficulties of capturing one’s self as a queer person playing the role of an idealized “woman”. Each clip expresses the vulnerability and banality of what it means to occupy domestic space.
