BACK TO THE FLUIDITY OF GENDER
THE FLUIDITY OF GENDER:
SCULPTURE BY LINDA STEIN
Can Wonder Woman Cra-ac-ck Gender Sterotypes? –– Are we in the midst of a Gender Revolution? –– Is the Fluidity of Gender becoming more and more fluid?
My answer is Yes! And this exhibition, The Fluidity of Gender: Sculpture by Linda Stein, tells this story visually and viscerally. My goal is to use my art to transform social consciousness and promote activism for gender justice. With my androgynous forms I invite the viewer to seek out diversity in unpredictable ways, to ‘try on’ new personal avatars and self-definitions, realizing that every new experience changes the brain’s structure and inspires each of us toward a more authentic self.
The larger-than-life black leather and metal buckled/zippered figures in this exhibition are a continuation of my sculptural series, Knights, which I began in 2002. They scramble gender expectations and merge opposites: They are female (and male—and every gender in between). They are strong (though soft), warrior-like (albeit pacifist guardians). They have a pull-push tension: a come-hither, seductive, playful, casual, caressing tug on the viewer to come closer, get involved, smile--and then, a formidable thrust which raises a level of caution and makes one want to step back.
It probably started with my recurring dreams as a kid in which I was continually running from those who would hurt me. I hid under staircases, I ran from planes, I pressed my weight against doors to prevent the bad guys from coming in. Over and over I would awake scared and exhausted from a night of Kafka-esque maneuvering. And in real life, as an adult, I found myself running for an entire day from Ground Zero, away from what I then thought was a bomb hitting the World Trade Center.
My YouTube video, Running, is a montage of these dreams and that 9/11 experience. As a montage, it fuses images of me with those of Carey Grant from North by Northwest, and Janet Leigh/Vera Miles from Psycho as we run, female-to-male-to-female, in the house, in the streets, in the fields. It provides a “foil” in this exhibition for my sculptural torsos/armor of protection. It becomes a backdrop and raison d’être for my obsessive desire to feel safe.
Acrylicized-paper sculptures hung on coat racks, mannequins and walls, are ready to be worn by SteinGIG participants who can monitor themselves in mirrors and change “skins” with varying gender-bending results. Participants feel new bodies, sometimes with accompanying brain changes. Since 2007, I’ve filmed dozens of these volunteer participants as they move about while wearing my sculptures, some of whom are shown in my Body-Swapping video, presented in this exhibit as well as on YouTube. Could my sculptures inspire someone to experience gender-fluidity? Could one feel safer? Braver? A year into this research, I read in the NY Times about two Swedish neuroscientists who also experimented with body-swapping and “presented evidence that the brain, when tricked by optical and sensory illusions, can quickly adopt any other human form, no matter how different, as its own.”
In grappling with my own insecurities I’m intrigued by how many of my volunteers feel empowered when donning these sculptures. I record them as they speak of crossing genders and creating new avatars for themselves. One man felt “pregnant, like an earth mother...with a very large womb” as he wore a torso with swollen abdomen. One woman, when wearing a Knight, was very happy and felt musical, and actually tapped and played on her sculpture as if it were an instrument. But she had a sharp emotional reaction with the second sculpture she put on. And, as she looked at herself in the mirror, she was reminded of how it felt to hold her aged mother as she died, just two weeks before. She felt as though she were literally turning into the corpse that her mother had become in her arms. We had to immediately remove the sculpture from her body so she could regain her composure. I learned that short-term brain changes can occur, even in a sculptural format.
And lastly there’s my fascination with Wonder Woman, and the part she plays in my work. She’s able to stop the bad guys—even convince them to reform—without ever killing! Her gender-bending strength and power is matched only by her compassion in seeking peace and justice. The question, Can Wonder Woman Cra-Ac-Ck Gender Stereotypes? (another of my YouTube videos), is paramount as this icon and female superhero confronts the sexism and bigotry prevalent at the time of her creation in 1941, as well as today. I incorporate images of her in many of my sculptures and include this YouTube video in my installation.
Created by William Molten Marston in 1941, Wonder Woman was a role model who sought peace and protection. She changed after Marston died in 1947, becoming much more of a bullet-breasted sex object, especially in the TV version with Lynda Carter. In my video I discuss Wonder Woman in comics and TV, as well as reference gender constrictions that leave women still struggling to break through the glass ceiling while sadly trying to maintain a culturally defined "femininity."
I grew up wanting to be popular with the boys and played a role of “deference,” always making sure the boy seemed smarter, better, stronger than me. So, for instance, even though I was an athlete, I purposely threw the bowling ball into the alley and hit the ping pong or tennis ball into the net, so the boy always won. This is what my lectures, my essays, my blog, my non-profit corporation, Have Art: Will Travel! Inc., my sculptures, videos and installations are about.