Cornell University

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Unruly Bodies: Fashion, Costume and Vulgarity in Contemporary Performance

Tuesday, March 30, 2021 at 1:30pm to 2:30pm

Virtual Event

A talk by Dr. Charlene Lau.  

Abstract: 

While nude and sexualized imagery of women has long played a key role in the history of art, rarely are women recorded as producers of such works. This lecture examines how the conflation of female cultural production and the pornographic disrupts age-old conceptions of conventional feminine beauty with raunchy performance and display. Contemporary artists and designers including Cindy Sherman, Narcissister, Victoria Sin and Michaela Stark reframe depictions of sexuality and conventional beauty, reclaiming space for female bodies by critiquing normative ways of being and appearing, subsequently entrapping the male gaze. Using fashion and costume as prosthesis or prop to alter their bodies, they employ various guises to simultaneously cloak and reveal the self. Sherman, Narcissister, Sin and Stark construct new personas and worlds where they can safely realize and negotiate non-normative identities and perform a self-conscious Othering, protected by the masking function of prosthetics and manipulations of the body. These generated characters map self-determined difference and heterogeneity—whether racial, cultural, sexual or otherwise—directly onto the political space of the body performed

Streaming site:

https://cornell.zoom.us/j/99350275373?pwd=V0k0UE43NmVMeHgvRTA2L2Q5Snl5dz09

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Event Type

Seminar

Departments

Cornell Human Ecology, Human Ecology Fiber Science and Apparel Design [DO NOT USE deprecated 1/23/23]

Contact E-Mail

ks247@cornell.edu

Contact Name

Karen Steffy

Contact Phone

6072558605

Speaker

Dr. Charlene Lau

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