Genessy’s Performance

John Berger 

“A painting could speak to the soul”

“We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves”

The social political issue I am displaying is identity. My performance addresses identity in a way in which it describes the stereotypes of a female, a male, as well as someone who choses to identify as “other” As you can see, the first image is a self portrait of half of my face identified as a female with lashes and red lip stick, and the other half has stereotypes women feed into such as emotional, bossy, dramatic, fragile,etc. The second set of photographs exemplifies men which has the goatee along with fitted and hoodie, and states that men shall be strong, tall, manly, cocky, aggressive, masculine, etc. Last but most certainly not least, we have the stereotypes of a person identifying as either man or women, here we see the rainbow flag depicted on the eye shadow above the lash, followed by the goatee and red lipstick. On the opposite side, the words read homophobia, coming out, transgender, lesbian and so on. I was inspired by many different artists and realized that my performance can be connected to the Cindy Sherman Effect. One of her quotes were, “We are in the era of YouTube fame and reality TV shows and makeovers, where you can be anything you want to be any minute of the day.” Here we can agree that as she states “you can be anything you want to be any time of the day is a perfect example of identity. No matter who you are, you can choose to be whoever you want no matter what people may say or think. Another Artist that helped me come up with my performance was John Berger. Berger has a book called Ways of seeingwhich offers the audience a different perspective of seeing men and women. Two of my favorite quotes are, “A man’s presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies.” “By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. These quotes exhibit how men are looked upon solely on how strong he is, on the contrary, a women is adressed depending on how she carries herself. A performance expresses self-identity and issues that affect that self-identity in a multiplicity of different ways including clothing and artistic expression. The theme, background, and art you use expresses who you are and how you identify. Without it a performance would simply be bland. Performance goes beyond other methods of representation like photographs and and paintings because it is different from theater. It sometimes does not have a structure, clear narrative, or appeal to the audience, Instead it displays the body’s role in artistic production.