Getting Located: Queer Semiotics in Dress

<p>The body, a long contested site of identity construction, has been used by historically by queers to convey desire, build affinity and transgress norms. Looking at the fashioned queer body, this capstone takes the form of a proposal for an art exhibition at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Seeking to engage with objects, performance and film which approximate, provide proxy for or depart from the body as a site, it explores the social and political quagmire of getting dressed. Comprised of contemporary art that looks at the rupture of legible bodily semiotics, this show wonders what new modes of expression form in their wake. Cruising the archive, what legacies and genealogies do artists engage, which ones will they willingly forget? What does the embodiment of queerness through dress look like in our current historical moment? What do these practices say about the future of explorations of identity through dress? Overall, these works, and their curation, hope to question the traditional modes of identity construction and the supposedly stable categories of gender, sex, sexuality, race and ability. The following white paper takes a multivocal approach to examining the discursive practices, nuanced modes, and slight twists that fashioning has undergone historically in the hands of queers. Through a multifaceted approach, it uses a bevy of forms (drawings, performance script, personal narrative) to refuse a singular neat and linear narrative, mirroring the ways that practices of queer self-fashioning grapple with and complicate dominant narratives and paradigms.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Master

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Liberal Studies

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2019

Author dc:creator

• Zimmerman, Callen

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Christopher Schmidt

• Art Practice
• Contemporary Art
• Cultural History
• Fashion Design
• Fiber, Textile, and Weaving Arts
• Fine Arts
• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies
• Museum Studies
• Sculpture
• Visual Studies
• queer
• fashion
• curation
• Leslie Lohman
• identity

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3349

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-4419