Portfolio: Sidsel Meineche Hansen

23/03/16
Portfolio: Sidsel Meineche Hansen

Sidsel Meineche Hansen: SECOND SEX WAR

Gasworks, London

17 March – 29 May 2016

“I would like to either abolish gender or multiply it beyond the binary, which would equate to the same thing,” says Danish-born, London-based artist Sidsel Meineche Hansen, whose current exhibition, SECOND SEX WAR, explores how this concept might be (re)produced in virtual adult entertainment.

Among other things, a new animated video, presented on Oculus Rift virtual reality headsets, considers the question of what post-human sex and sexuality might be like. Visitors take on the role of the avatar EVA v3.0 to experience this firsthand. Meineche Hansen is, in part, motivated by the feminist “sex wars” of the late 70s/early 80s, which politicised the concept and representation of female sexuality and led to a split of the feminist movement into anti-pornography and anti-censorship camps. Her own attitude towards pornography is unresolved, but her work debatably falls into the category of 3D porn. But is pornography art? “Sure, if you say it’s art, it’s art,” Meineche Hansen replies nonchalantly.

Alongside the video, Meineche Hansen is displaying a series of polymer clay sculptures and reliefs. Her practice is research-led and a series of seminars, planned for during SECOND SEX WAR, will look at the overlap between pornography and body horror. Although entrenched in academic discourse, they will be open to all. As for the exhibition, however, parental discretion is advised!

Published in the April print issue of DIVA magazine

GI’s Anatomy: Drawing Sex, Drawing Gender, Drawing Bodies

GI’s Anatomy: Drawing Sex, Drawing Gender, Drawing Bodies

Anna McNay and Jay Stewart

Anna McNay is a freelance art writer and editor, based in London. She is Arts Editor for DIVA magazine and Deputy Editor for State Media.  Anna has reviewed many LGBT exhibitions, including those in which this review’s case studies have participated and has authored the review elements in this piece.

Jay Stewart is co-founder of Gendered Intelligence. He holds a PhD in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths College, University of London.  Jay convened the GI Anatomy project and is author of the factual project information.

GI’s Anatomy: Introduction

In spring 2013, thirty transgender and intersex people participated in a series of practical life drawing workshops in London programmed by arts based organisation, Gendered Intelligence, in collaboration with life drawing tutors from London Drawing.[i] What made these art classes distinct was the fact that the models posing also identified as transgender and/or as having an intersex condition. The models had a range of body types, some of which were visibly identifiable as transgender or intersex, some not. The project aimed to engage the participants with complex ideas around sexed and gendered bodies that pertained to their own life experience. Throughout the project, the participants interrogated the ways in which scientific discourses and practices have come to shape our understanding of non-normatively sexed and gendered bodies.

To read this article in full, please see: http://tsq.dukejournals.org/content/2/2/330.abstract

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[i] See genderedintelligence.co.uk and http://www.londondrawing.com/. This project was funded by the Wellcome Trust as part of their arts award.

Display: Jessica Yatrofsky: I Heart Girl

17/04/15

Jessica Yatrofsky: I Heart Girl 

For where is any author in the world. Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?

[Shakespeare, Loves Labour Lost, Act IV, scene 3]

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and while there is evidence that perceptions of beauty are evolutionarily determined, that humans might be attracted to mates that are likely to offer them enhanced chances of survival, the experience of beauty nevertheless remains subjective.

In her first monograph, I Heart Boy, which launched her career in 2010, photographer Jessica Yatrofsky laid bare what some have referred to as the ‘gay’ ideal of male beauty, stripped down to the essence, with hairless bodies and a youthful androgyny, reflected in her choice of the word ‘boy’ not ‘man’. In her latest counterpart, I Heart Girl, she turns to female beauty. Across 96 pages, she lays out photographs of naked – and near naked – young women, all of whom, in some way or other, are beautiful, all of whom are sexy and innocently alluring. None conforms to the classical definition of symmetry and aesthetic perfection, many almost boyish with their slender figures, but each allows her inner beauty to shine through. As George Pitts notes in the introduction, femininity is teased out of androgyny, with each subject’s self-awareness and quiet confidence – true characteristics of survival – capturing the essence of this ‘fairer’ sex.

Jessica Yatrofsky

I Heart Girl 

Published by powerHouse Books

May 2015

Portraits / Fine Art Photography / Feminism


Hardcover, 8.5 x 10.5 inches, 96 pages


ISBN: 978-1-57687-739-5

$30.00 US/CAN

http://www.powerhousebooks.com/site/wp-content/uploads/IHeartGirlPreview1.pdf

To see this photo spread in full, please buy the May 2015 print issue of DIVA magazine

Review of Club Photos: London x Paris at Dog Eared Gallery

06/11/13

Club Photos: London x Paris

Alisa Gallery @ Dog Eared Gallery, 25-28 Field Street, WC1X 9DA

17 October – 17 November 2013

At the end of an uninviting alleyway, behind Kings Cross, lies a large warehouse, now HQ to a collective of independent filmmakers and artists known as Dog Eared Films. On the first floor of this building is a part-time gallery space, currently home to Alisa Gallery, and showing some 30 photographs by young artists from London and Paris. Presented as documentary, in the styles of Larry Clark, Gus Van Sant and Nan Goldin, really they are little more than enlarged party snaps. Either way, they are certainly a portrait of a generation: the Instagram generation. As one of the exhibitors, Hannibal Volkoff, notes: ‘Lived exhibitionism is the new moment.’

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.divamag.co.uk/category/arts-entertainment/review-club-photos-london-x-paris.aspx

Review of Sarah Lucas: Situation - Absolute Beach Man Rubble at the Whitechapel Gallery

29/10/13

Sarah Lucas: Situation - Absolute Beach Man Rubble

Whitechapel Gallery

2 October – 15 December 2013

Rotting hams, kippers and kebabs; cucumbers, bananas, zeppelins; melons, lemons, and fried eggs. Sarah Lucas’ body part metaphors are far from subtle. Crude and conjuring up a raw, base, animal sexuality, her androgynous gestures are hermaphroditic to the hilt – none of this could-be-one-thing, could-be-the-other. No, Lucas’ constructs are absolutely and fully both.

Born in 1962 and part of the Hirstian Goldsmith’s generation (albeit two years his senior), Lucas took part in the now notorious Freeze exhibition of 1988. Running ‘The Shop’ with Tracey Emin for six months in 1993 and dating Gary Hume and Angus Fairhurst (who later committed suicide), she lived YBA (Young British Artist) life to the full. In fact, her credentials as a 1990s party animal stretch as far as her sometimes (self-)reportedly going out to post a letter and returning a week later. 

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/sarah-lucas