Ciel variable 127 – SISTERS, FIGHTERS, QUEENS | Readings
Authors: Dayna McLeod
The book Casa Susanna, and the photography exhibition that it accompanied, looked back at an unusual celebration of femininity that took place in New York State in the 1960s: that of a community of transvestite men, trans women, and non-gender-conforming people.
Ciel variable 123 – THE POWER OF INTIMACY | Portfolios
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Michèle Pearson Clarke
[Summer 2023] Queer Black Masculinities: Middle-aged Boyhood By Dayna McLeod [Excerpt] An exercise in confronting shyness, shame, and fear about singing, Quantum Choir1 is a moving enactment of queer kinship and vulnerability in which Michèle Pearson Clarke invites three other queer masculine people with no singing experience to learn to sing with her and ultimately […]
Ciel variable 118 - EXHIBITING PHOTOGRAPHY | Book Reviews
Authors: Dayna McLeod
[Fall 2021] Jean-François Prost Publication collaborative Québec, Éditions VU, 2021, 160 pages, français, anglais et portugais By Dayna McLeod [Excerpt] If you’ve missed in-real-life parties, being with people, and exhibitions during the pandemic, La Fête is a feast for the heart, head, and soul. The socially distanced isolation of the pandemic brings a chance to […]
Ciel variable 113 - TRANS-IDENTITIES | Portfolios
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Kent Monkman
October 25, 2023 [originally published in CV113 in Fall 2019] — By Dayna McLeod. Miss Chief Eagle Testickle is the muse and alter ego of Kent Monkman, a Cree artist who confronts the violent and systemic consequences of colonialism on Indigenous peoples in North America, with attention to Canada and Quebec.
Ciel variable 88 - FACES | Portfolios
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: JJ Levine
January 17, 2017 [originally published in CV88, Spring 2011] — Vivid colours and rich, symbolic domestic detailing underscore the confident, self-possessed gazes of JJ Levine’s subjects in their series Queer Portraits. An exploration of identity, gender politics, community, public vs. private, radical queer life, and deviant gender presentations, Queer Portraits confronts us with a group of subjects that ultimately reflect a portrait of the artist themselves. An intimate look at Levine’s community, this series plays with …
Ciel variable 75 - MUTATIONS | Portfolios
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Paul Litherland
[Fall 2007] In Absolutely Fabulous, Paul Litherland playfully constructs stereotypical gender identities in himself, only to deconstruct them and raise his viewers’ awareness of cultural biases. The ten works that constitute this series evolved from a 1993 performance, Souvenirs. Each work is a self-portrait in which gendered clothing articles and props are used. In their […]
Ciel variable 65 - PORTRAITS | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Adad Hannah, Carl Bouchard, Martin Dufrasne, Vito Acconci
[Fall 2004] March 4–May 22, 2004 Dazibao, Montréal Performance and Photography: POINT & SHOOT is a three-part exhibition project curated by Michèle Thériault and France Choinière that examines the photograph as performance prop, subject, and object, and the photographic process as performative act, witness, and documentarian. Shown at Dazibao in March, April, and May 2004, […]
Ciel variable 63 - PERSONA | Portfolios
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Nikki S. Lee
[Spring 2004] par Dayna McLeod In “Image #6” of Nikki Lee’s The Punk Project series, two punks are seated on the cement steps of an innocuous building. He has a closely cropped mohawk and wears camouflage pants with a leather jacket thrown across his lap. She wears ripped net stockings over striped tights, and a […]
Ciel variable 58 - NUDES AND PORTRAITS | Portfolios
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Marisa Portolese
[Summer 2002] Self-possessed women of all shapes, sizes, and ages, each fills the frame with intense looks, confidence, sex appeal, and power as she looks head-on into the camera’s lens and past, to the viewer. Compellingly seductive, these subjects pose for themselves and for the camera with a confronting gaze that is just as powerful. […]
Ciel variable 53 - IDENTITIES | Exhibition reviews
Authors: Dayna McLeod | Artists: Alexa Wright
[Winter 2000-2001] par Dayna McLeod Articule, Montreal September 9 – October 8, 2000 Projecting the agency of the ego and the power of the image in an age obsessed with identity politics, performative fiction, and digital truth, Alexa Wright reveals disabled versions of herself in her solo exhibition at Articule, I. This series of eight […]