Identity - Catherine Opie, Chicken, 1991 - by Map Lau

Art on “Identity”

• Preeminent theme in Western art and art discourse
  
• Interested in identity:
  - 1990, The Decade Show
  - 1993, Whitney Biennial
  
• Key theme in United States and Europe after WWII


• Identity
  - self identity
  - gender identity
  - sexuality identity
  

Catherine Opie

• North American


• Homosexual artist, photographer
  
• Documentary photography


• Identities <-> surrounding architecture


• Play with color
  - formal color-saturated portraits


• “Let’s push the boundaries a little bit here about what you guys think normal is.”
  

Catherine Opie, Chicken

• 1990 series, Being and Having


• altered by sporting facial hair


• Fake mustaches and beards


• Chicken - nameplate engraved with“gang persona”

• Challenge gender stereotypes


• Binary oppositions (二元對立)
  --> act correctly = Normal
  --> Chicken- cross-dressing = Queer , Abnormal
  --> mix two gender’s characteristics together


• Identity is not fixed


• Fluid, transformable and expanding


• Determine by outside influences
  - using fake mustaches


• Gender is ambiguous
  

Questions

• Rather than identity, can you think of other issues/messages that Catherine Opie is going to present in the work of Chicken? Or do you have other interpretation of this work?


• To what extend does this work help to understand the issue of identity?
  

Personal views

• The status of female
  - maleà higher status in society
  - pretended to be male
  - strive for the acceptance and increase status


• Challenge on “What you see is what you get?”
  - subvert expectation of realism and authenticity
  - invisibility of the homosexual community and queer culture

References

• Christopher Lyon, Lesbian Art in American, United States of America: Rizzoli International Publications, 2000.


• Robertson, Jean and Craig Mc Daniel (2005), Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art After 1980. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.


• Catherine Opie at the Guggenheim, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/09/25/arts/0926-OPIE_1.html


• Peter Plagens, From Frame to Tame,
  http://www.newsweek.com/id/160063?tid=relatedcl