my insides returning to our outside complexion is a video art and text installation of a video projected on hanging strips of paper with a poem cut out across the material. This piece was created in collaboration with artists Yves Al-Sharifi, Judy Chau, Komal Lally and Dean Vukovic for an undergraduate class, RTA 322: Technology Identity Creativity, at Toronto Metropolitan University.
This work was the gracious recipient of the following awards at the TARA Awards 2023:
Best Art Installation or Sculpture Project (inaugural award)
Best Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Project (nomination)
Best Art Installation or Sculpture Project (inaugural award)
Best Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Project (nomination)
Artist Statement
my insides returning to our outside complexion is a video art and text installation that explores gender expression in the online space and how, while aware of the internet's harmful capabilities, it can also be a source for gender euphoria of identities beyond the binary amidst the discourse surrounding the validity of gender and non-conforming expression in current society.
Through this space, a form of expression in gender identity was created and composed of its desires, inherent urges, and the explicit emotions that arise from experimenting with identity. Joy, guilt, fear, anger, and ambition are expressed through a relationship with implicit emotions and poetry and explicit expression through materials. In the physical representation of the “in-between” made through the contrast between tradition and modern materials, creating an alternate artwork through the two’s combination, the result is an exposition of experimentation in gender that is a performance in itself. What is created is a transitional space slowly integrated into new media that attempts to disregard the constant desire for binary expression and expectations but instead allows complete emotions and thoughts to push through.
Based on Milena Pafundi’s Toxica and Legacy Russell’s writings on Glitch Feminism, the work expresses how technology and the internet, while upholding traditional transphobic and misogynistic ideations, also provides an outlet for gender expression beyond the societal binary as a means of euphoria due to the open nature of the online space.
Process
The process work was divided into three segments: video art, material experience (poetry and physical fabrication), and projection installation. I co-directed the video portion as well as designed and constructed the hanging paper, digitizing and formatting the poem on Adobe Illustrator. I also recorded the final documentation in the studio space.
Special thanks to my co-collaborators on the project: Komal Lally, Yves Al-Sharifi, Dean Vukovic and Judy Chau, as well as the New Media Makerspace staff.