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Elements of Vogue: A Case Study in Radical Performance

Annotated by Julia Morandeira Arrizabalaga
Year

2020

Publisher

CA2MCentro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid

Author

Sabel Gavaldon
Manuel Segade

Topics
Gender & Queer Based Violence
Related

Publisher website
Performance by Benji Hardt, "The Dancer as Insurgent"

Annotation

Elements of Vogue — both the exhibition and this accompanying publication — approaches voguing as a case study of radical performance: that is as a political choreography in which blackness, queerness and cultural gestures are put to dance together, undoing normative identities and inventing novel ways of living together, one pose at a time. Taking LGTBQI+ practices of reading and shading as the articulating forces, this reader-cum-shader enacts a cross-reading of seminal texts and artworks, punctuated by a myriad of quotes authored by anyone from Cornel West to Whitney Houston. Altogether, it aims to trace a possible and always unstable genealogy of the black queer social and political body, and its aesthetic-social potential; literally throwing shade on any authoritative interpretation.

Julia Morandeira Arrizabalaga

By historically dense queer gesture, I mean a gesture whose significance and connotative queer force is dense with antinormative meanings.
Related

Publisher website
Performance by Benji Hardt, "The Dancer as Insurgent"

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