Abstract
Feminist interventions since the second wave in the 1970s have made a concerted effort to challenge misogynist and heteropatriarchal impulses in the art world. In recent years, debates around post-feminist and trans/feminist praxis have continued to push the bounds of feminist interventions. This paper situates the oeuvre of contemporary artist Travis Alabanza in a rich history of feminist interventions arguing that they deploy post-feminist and trans/feminist methods that push the limits of feminism and feminist artistic interventions in timely, necessary, and generative directions. Non-binary, Black British, interdisciplinary artist Travis Alabanza is based in London. In 2017, Alabanza was the youngest artist-in-residence at Tate Britain’s Workshop Program. Alabanza has performed in influential London venues, including the Barbican, the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Roundhouse, and hundreds of other venues across Europe and the U.S. Pushing beyond essentialist understandings of gender oppression and its intersections with race, this chapter argues that Alabanza mobilizes interdisciplinary, utopian praxis not beholden to dominant modes of signification, providing an unprecedented opportunity to study their mobilization of post-feminist, trans/feminism as an artistic, aesthetic, and political intervention.
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Notes
- 1.
See, for example, Legacy Russell, Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (London; New York: Verso, 2020); Angela Dimitrakaki, Gender, Artwork and the Global Imperative: A Materialist Feminist Critique (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2013); Thalia Gouma-Peterson and Patricia Mathews, “The Feminist Critique of Art History,” The Art Bulletin 69, no. 3 (September 1987): 326–357; Margaret Harrison, ‘Art herstory’ MaMa: Women Artists Together (Birmingham: Ma Ma Collective, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1977), 35; Clare Hemmings, Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011); Muriel Magenta, “Women-image-now,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 15, no. 1 (1987): 56–57; Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture, and Social Change (London: SAGE Publications, 2008); Linda Nochlin, “Why have there been no great women artists?” in Women, Art, Power and Other Essays (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), 145–178; Rozsika Parker and Giselda Pollock, Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology (London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan & Paul, 1981); Griselda Pollock, “Feminist interventions in art’s histories,” in Art History and Its Methods, ed. Eric Fernie (London: Phaidon, 1994), 296–313; Donald Preziosi, Rethinking Art History: Meditations on a Coy Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
- 2.
Consider the works of Laura Agular, Ghada Amer, Ruth Asawa, Lynda Baglis, Louise Bourgeois, Tammy Rae Carland, Judy Chicago, Renee Cox, Tracey Emin, Valie Export, Nan Goldin, Harmony Hammond, Jenny Holzer, Eva Hesse, Barbara Kruger, Yayoi Kusama, Sarah Lucas, Ana Mendieta, Shirin Neshat, Alice Neel, Georgia O’Keeffe, Yoko Ono, Cathy Opie, Howardena Pindell, Adrian Piper, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Carolee Schneeman, Miriam Shapiro, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, Hannah Wilke, and many others.
- 3.
I use “post-feminist” and “post-feminism” throughout this chapter as it relates to Derek Conrad Murray’s use of the phrases. I use “trans/feminism” as coined by Susan Stryker and Talia M. Bettcher in their introduction to the special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly, May 1, 2016, which mobilized the term to indicate an exploration of the complex intersections and overlaps of trans and feminist methods, movements, and approaches. I return to this below.
- 4.
In a conversation with the author on May 3, 2021, via Zoom, Alabanza talked about the experience of being a spectacle from a young age, growing up gender non-conforming in the projects. For more on contemporary understandings of the term “trans,” see Jack Halberstam, Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variability (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2018), 4–5, 52, 85, 88. Also, see C. Riley Snorton, in Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 8. Snorton notes that trans is elusive, slippery, and amorphous. Susan Stryker notes that, for her, transgender is fluid and indeterminate: “it is the movement across a socially imposed boundary away from an unchosen starting place—rather than any particular destination or mode of transition” (emphasis original). Susan Stryker, Transgender History, Seal Studies (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press: Distributed by Publishers Group West, 2008), 1.
- 5.
Travis Alabanza, “Black Bones and Cycles,” from a performance at Sofar London on December 15, 2016 (viewable at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdiJ54sze8Y).
- 6.
See: Amelia Jones, ed., The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. Also see: Jennifer Doyle and Amelia Jones, “Introduction: New Feminist Theories of Visual Culture.” Signs 31, no. 3 (2006): 607–15. https://doi.org/10.1086/499288.
- 7.
Yas Necati, “Travis Alabanza Discusses How Transgender People are Received in Public,” Indy 100, September 6, 2018, https://www.indy100.com/discover/travis-alabanza-burgerz-show-lgbtq-transphobic-harrassment-stage-performance-8525636, accessed November 30, 2021.
- 8.
For more on the ethos of the contemporary feminist project, see Jennifer Doyle and Amelia Jones, “Introduction: New Feminist Theories of Visual Culture,” Signs 31, no. 3 (2006): 607–615. https://doi.org/10.1086/499288.
- 9.
Today’s feminist theories of the visual are indebted to the work of feminist scholars and artists of previous eras and continue to take on more nuanced and complex interrogations of social inequities as they relate to the visual arena, while actively working to attend to the blind spots and limits of earlier feminist discourse. For more on this see Jennifer Doyle and Amelia Jones, “Introduction: New Feminist Theories of Visual Culture,” Signs 31, no. 3 (2006): 607–615. https://doi.org/10.1086/499288. For further reading on regressive transphobic feminism or TERFS (trans exclusionary radical feminists) see my discussion with Alabanza and other trans scholars and artists Ace Lehner, “Critical Questions and Embodied Reflections: Trans Visual Culture Today—A Roundtable,” Art Journal 80, no. 4 (October 2, 2021): 38–52, https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2021.1947702.
- 10.
José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, Cultural Studies of the Americas, v. 2 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 1.
- 11.
It is important to note that there were many feminist scholars and artists of color who made a significant impact on the shape of art and culture at this time, including Laura Aguilar, Renee Cox, Audre Lorde, Ana Mendieta, Howardena Pindell, Adrien Piper, Faith Ringgold, Betye Saar, Lorna Simpson, Carrie Mae Weems, and curator Thelma Goldin, whose now iconic curation of the Whitney Biennial in 1993 made inroads for diversity and identity within Contemporary Art and feminist discourse.
- 12.
Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–1299. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039. For more see: Adrien Katherine Wing, ed., Critical Race Feminism: A Reader, 2nd ed./foreword to second edition by Richard Delgado; foreword to first edition by Derrick Bell, Critical America (New York: New York University Press, 2003).
- 13.
bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black female spectators,” The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader (London [u.a]: Routledge, 2010), 107–118. For more on the history of Black feminist thought, see: Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd ed., Routledge Classics (New York: Routledge, 2009).
- 14.
The list of trans artists and scholars working in the lineage of intersectional feminism is in no way comprehensive; for more information on this, see: Ace Lehner, “Critical Questions and Embodied Reflections: Trans Visual Culture Today—A Roundtable,” Art Journal 80, no. 4 (October 2, 2021): 38–52, https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2021.1947702. Like bell hooks, micha cárdenas uses lower case lettering in her name.
- 15.
For further discussion of reactionary transphobic “feminism,” see Julia Serano, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive (Berkeley, California: Seal Press, 2013); Julia Serano, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, Second edition (Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2016), and Sara Ahmed “An Affinity of Hammers” in Eric A. Tourmaline, Stanley and Johanna Burton, eds., Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, Critical Anthologies in Art and Culture (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2017), 221–234. Also See the work of C. Riley Snorton and Marquis Bey.
- 16.
Susan Stryker and Talia M. Bettcher, “Introduction: Trans/Feminisms,” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 3 nos. 1–2 (2016): 5–14, https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-3334127.
- 17.
The introduction of the issue is abundant with information about the ongoing tensions between and promises of feminism, trans studies, and trans/feminisms. Stryker and Bettcher, 5–14.
- 18.
Bridget Minamore, “‘Damn, I’m good at this!’ Is Travis Alabanza the Future of Theatre?” The Guardian, March 27, 2019. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/mar/27/travis-alabanza-interview-future-theatre, accessed June 23, 2020. Also see: Jack Pengelly, “Travis Alabanza and Jamie Windust Won’t Be Just Your Non-Binary Checkbox,” Gay Times, August 2019. Available online: https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/amplify/travis-alabanza-and-jamie-windust-wont-be-just-your-non-binary-checkbox/, accessed February 7, 2020). Also see: Tom Rasmussen, “Travis Alabanza, Performer,” Dazed, 2019. Available online: https://www.dazeddigital.com/projects/article/44138/1/travis-alabanza-performer-biography-dazed-100-2019-profile, accessed February 27, 2020. Also see: Aisha Sanyang-Meek, “Interview: Travis Alabanza,” Rife Magazine. June 14, 2016. Available online: https://www.rifemagazine.co.uk/2016/06/interview-travis-alabanza/, accessed December 7, 2017. Also see Alabanza’s website www.travisalabanza.co.uk.
- 19.
See Travis Alabanza’s website: http://travisalabanza.co.uk.
- 20.
This is not meant to be a comprehensive list but rather to situate Alabanza’s intervention as part of a larger movement of queer and trans artists decolonizing with antiracist interests. For more, see: Ace Lehner, “Critical Questions and Embodied Reflections: Trans Visual Culture Today—A Roundtable,” Art Journal 80, no. 4 (October 2, 2021): 38–52, https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2021.1947702.
- 21.
For further reading on Alabanza’s use of fashion as intervention, see Ace Lehner, “Self-Image as Intervention: Travis Alabanza and the New Ontology of Portrait Photography,” in Ace Lehner, Self-Representation in an Expanded Field: From Self-Portraiture to Selfie, Contemporary Art in the Social Media Age, 2021, https://www.mdpi.com/books/pdfview/edition/2034.
- 22.
YouTube Performance of Burgerz and interview with Alabanza viewable at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OurIo1XW5HY.
- 23.
Elsewhere, I have written in some detail about the inner workings of racist transphobic violence. See: Ace Lehner “Self-Image as Intervention.”
- 24.
Travis Alabanza, Burgerz, 2021, 7.
- 25.
Yas Necati, “Travis Alabanza discusses How Transgender People are Received in Public,” Indy 100, September 6, 2018, https://www.indy100.com/discover/travis-alabanza-burgerz-show-lgbtq-transphobic-harrassment-stage-performance-8525636. I have explored the concept of the trans “freak” elsewhere. See: Ace Lehner, “Trans Self-Imaging Praxis, Decolonizing Photography, and the Work of Alok Vaid-Menon,” Refract: An Open Access Visual Studies Journal 2 (2019), https://doi.org/10.5070/R72145857, retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5w56c6n3.
- 26.
hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black female spectators,” 107–118.
- 27.
Alexander G. Weheliye, Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014).
- 28.
Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex,” Routledge Classics (Abingdon: Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2011). Also see Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York and London: Routledge, 2004). Trans studies scholars including Susan Stryker, J. Halberstam, micha cárdenas, and others have taken up the study of gender as a regulating apparatus as well.
- 29.
For more on dysphoria and debates about how this pathology reinforces binary gender norms, see: Susan Stryker and Aren Z. Aizura, eds., The Transgender Studies Reader 2, 18–19, 263, 275, 500, 515–16, 645 and 647.
- 30.
Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York; London: Routledge, 2004), 77.
- 31.
For more on the relationship between trans identities, racialization, and visual culture see Ace Lehner, “Self-Image as Intervention.” Also see: Eric A. Tourmaline, Stanley and Johanna Burton, eds., Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, Critical Anthologies in Art and Culture (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2017). Also See the work of C. Riley Snorton and Marquis Bey.
- 32.
Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill, and Catherine Rottenberg, “Postfeminism, Popular Feminism and Neoliberal Feminism? Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg in Conversation,” Feminist Theory 21, no. 1 (2020): 5. For more on debates with “Girl Power,” see Michelle S. Bae, “Girl Power: Girlhood, Popular Media and Postfeminism,” Visual Arts Research 37 (2011): 28–40. Some scholars noted that the concept of “girl power” was often tied to consumer power and not at all about reworking gender inequity.
- 33.
Banet-Weiser, Gill, and Rottenberg, 9. Also see: Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010).
- 34.
For more on post-feminism, see Banet-Weiser, Gill, and Rottenberg, 11. For further information on post-feminist media, see Rosalind Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 10 (2007): 147–66. Also see Mary Flanagan, Jennifer González, The Guerrilla Girls, Margo Machida, Marsha Meskimmon, Martha Rosler, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Amelia Jones, “Feminist Activist Art, A Roundtable Forum, 24–31, August 2005,” NWSA Journal 19 (2007): 1–22.
- 35.
Yas Necati, “Travis Alabanza discusses How Transgender People are Received in Public.”
- 36.
Derek Conrad Murray, “Notes to self: The visual culture of selfies in the age of social media,” Consumption Markets & Culture, 18:6 (2015), 490–516, https://doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2015.1052967.
- 37.
Talia Mae Bettcher, “Trapped in the Wrong Theory: Re-thinking Trans Oppression and Resistance,” Signs 39, no. 2 (2014): 43–65.
- 38.
Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us (New York: Routledge Press, 1994). See Kate Bornstein’s website: http://katebornstein.com, and Kate Bornstein, Kate Bornstein: My Gender? Oh, It’s Nothing, in The New York Times, June 19, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/19/us/kate-bornstein-gender-reflection.html.
- 39.
Kate Bornstein, Gender Outlaw. Also see Kate Bornstein, My New Gender Workbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Achieving World Peace through Gender Anarchy and Sex Positivity, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2013).
- 40.
Julia Serano, Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism & Trans Feminism (Oakland, CA: Switch Hitter Press, 2016), 71. For more on current directions in trans/feminism, see: Lucía Egaña and Miriam Solá, “Hacking the Body: A Transfeminist War Machine,” trans. by Michael Brasher, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 3, nos. 1–2 (May 2016): 74–80, https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-3334223; and micha cárdenas, Trans Desire (New York: Atropos Press, 2010).
- 41.
Travis Alabanza, Burgerz, 2021.
- 42.
Nancy Ordover, American Eugenics: Race, Queer Anatomy, and the Science of Nationalism. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), accessed August 4, 2021, ProQuest Ebook Central, page XXI. I would include trans people in this case as it seems, given the context of Ordover’s thinking, queer in this sense may be understood as anyone disrupting binary gender and biological sex binary essentialisms.
- 43.
Rana A. Hogarth, Medicalizing Blackness: Making Racial Difference in the Atlantic World, 1780–1840 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017).
- 44.
Not only should women be less hairy than men, but hairier people were often believed to be “racially inferior” and more likely to be “insane.” Rebecca M Herzig, Plucked: A History of Hair Removal (New York and London: New York University Press, 2016). See Introduction.
- 45.
Greg Thomas, The Sexual Demon of Colonial Power: Pan-African Embodiment and Erotic Schemes of Empire (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007). 9–10, 23.
- 46.
Clare Sears, Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco, Perverse Modernities (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015). See Chapter 6.
- 47.
Sears. Also see J. Halberstam, trans introduction. Recent scholarship by folks including Kate Redburn and Christopher Adam Mitchell has suggested that this language has been applied retroactively and that at the time police relied on vague laws that they borrowed from military code and procedural manuals.
- 48.
Alok Vaid-Menon, Beyond the Gender Binary, Pocket Change Collective (New York: Penguin Workshop, 2020), 5–6.
- 49.
Jian Neo Chen, Trans Exploits: Trans of Color Cultures and Technologies in Movement, Anima: Critical Race Studies Otherwise (Durham and London, NC: Duke University Press, 2019), 7.
- 50.
For more on these ideas see Derek Conrad Murray and Soraya Murray, “Uneasy Bedfellows: Canonical Art Theory and the Politics of Identity,” Art Journal 65, no. 1 (March 2006): 22–39, https://doi.org/10.1080/00043249.2006.10791193.
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Lehner, A. (2023). The Future Is More than Female: Post-Feminist Trans/Feminism in Contemporary Art. In: Hannum, G., Pyun, K. (eds) Expanding the Parameters of Feminist Artivism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09378-4_15
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