The Performative Self-Portrait
Introduction
Situated in a moment when questions of identity, ranging from race, gender, sexuality, and ability to religion, nationality, profession, and politics, is increasingly at the fore of national conversations, The Performative Self-Portrait explores work by artists who turn the camera back onto themselves for a multitude of reasons. In some cases, these artists are exploring the materiality of their bodies or highlighting the ways the identify to those who situate themselves into history, play with narratives, or question the very limits of what identity can do. In all, this exhibition sees these self-portraits as moments of action and inaction that does something more than releasing the shutter.
In 1955, philosopher J. L. Austin argued that “performative utterances” do more than provide descriptions and can exceed beyond being either true or false; the uttering of a performative does an action that does something. The example might be the saying of “I do” at the wedding alter that binds people into the legal contract of marriage or a jury’s pronouncement of a guilty verdict during a criminal trial. The Performative Self-Portrait explores the way the photographic image becomes a similar performative action where the combination of a photographer’s use of gesture, pose, photographic chemistry, and pre- and post-production manipulation does something beyond making an image.
The Performative Self-Portrait invites you to reflect on how, if, or when you perform your own identity and see identity as a site of heritage, history, and possibility.
Co-curated
Conor Moynihan, assistant curator, Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, Matthew Kluk, RISD Proctor 2021-2022 and PhD Student, History of Art and Architecture, Brown University, ,
RISD Museum is supported by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and with the generous partnership of the Rhode Island School of Design, its Board of Trustees, and Museum Governors.
Exhibition images
