Masculinities: Liberation through Photography
- Submitting institution
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Falmouth University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 467
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Barbican Art Gallery, Barbican Centre London
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of first exhibition
- July
- Year of first exhibition
- 2020
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
-
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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A - Creative Industries Futures
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Through the medium of film and photography, this major exhibition
considers how masculinity has been coded, performed, and socially
constructed from the 1960s to the present. The exhibition brings
together work by 50+ international artists, photographers and
filmmakers including Laurie Anderson, Sunil Gupta, Rotimi Fani-Kayode,
Isaac Julien and Catherine Opie.
This exhibition charts complex and sometimes contradictory
representations of masculinities. Touching on themes including power,
patriarchy, queer identity, female perceptions, hypermasculine
stereotypes, tenderness and family, the exhibition shows how central
photography and film have been to how masculinities are imagined and
understood in contemporary culture.
My role as curatorial advisor on this exhibition involved scoping out the
content, selecting artists, devising a structure and thematising six
sections for the show. This structure, including thematic or conceptual
sections such as, 'disrupting the archetype' or 'family and fatherhood’
reflected and contributes to current discourse in photography, gender
studies, art history, social studies and connected fields.
My key research questions for the project, which are addressed in my
essay in the exhibition catalogue, were:
1. To what extent has photography and film contributed to the
understanding and undermining of masculinity in contemporary
culture?
2. In what ways have photographers and filmmakers from the 1960s to
the present examined the image of masculinity as socially constructed,
performative, unfixed and coded, as opposed to biologically
determined?
3. How have artists sought to disrupt and destabilise gender
conventions and binary positions to offer a more nuanced and
complicated vision?
4. As curators, how can we encourage audiences to think more
exceptionally about identity, gender and sexuality through different
artistic strategies, spaces and times?
5. Can an exhibition about masculinities faithfully align itself as a
feminist gesture?
Research Output: exhibition curation and catalogue essay
Contextual: installation video, journal article, reviews
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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