Performing Identity
Polixeni Papapetrou is one of Australia’s leading contemporary photomedia artists. Her enduring interest, across all her work, is in how “the other” is represented and how “the other” performs in reinforcing our own identity.
Papapetrou has been exploring relationships between history, contemporary culture, landscape, identity and childhood through her photographic practice since the mid-eighties. Marilyn Monroe impersonators, Elvis Presley fans, body builders, circus performers, drag queens and children have all taken their turn in front of her camera.
fluoro spoke with Polixeni Papapetrou about her fascination with the role of performance on constructing identity.
(f) What influenced your initial choice to work with photography?
(PP) In my 20s I encountered Diane Arbus’s photography and related to the subject matter. I wanted to make pictures like hers and the camera became my medium of choice.
(f) Your work has evolved from documentary photography, such as ‘Elvis Immortal’ to theatrical constructed scenes. What did this progression allow you to explore in term of personality?
(PP) The change in style from documentary to a more performative or constructed scene began with the ‘Body/Building’ and ‘Searching for Marilyn’ series. I wanted to tell a story about the intersection of history and contemporary culture by juxtaposing images to tell a story. I also began working with costumes and props to create works that were more theatrical. This allowed me to explore ideas about identity in a historical and contemporary context.
(f) You have mentioned your work is “all about masquerade and symbols” tell us more about how you see this relating to the construction of identity.
(PP) I think that we can assume that identity, whether it is a collective identity or one’s own identity, is constructed. How we look at identity can change from time to time, and we as individuals have the ability change it. For example, gender identity is not determined by biology alone. Gender and sexuality can be willfully re-defined by a change of musculature, anatomical parts, clothing, performance or surgery.
The female bodybuilder can disrupt our notions of femininity and female identity. Her musculature can become so developed that her body resembles a male body. The female impersonator on the other hand can present with all the femininity that the female bodybuilder lacks. Seen in this way, identity can be constructed, performed or seen as masquerade.
(f) Body Builders, Elvis impersonators, circus performers and children…these are diverse identities. How do your works relate to you, now?
(PP) The different groups that you mention are diverse identities on the surface, but what they have in common is that they are all performing their identity. I have been interested in this theme in trying to fathom what it means to be human and I guess that I’m still investigating this.
But since you ask about where I stand in the equation, things have certainly evolved from some relatively anonymous figures to the ones that I know most intimately, namely my children. Through the various series in which Olympia and Solomon act I get to ponder their deeper identity that lies behind their clever ways of adopting “otherness”. To me, reflecting on ‘The Ghillies’, the case of Solomon diving into disguise only to emerge larger than life, is very telling. Behind the play-acting is a person, an ontological core that is somehow essential.
No matter how much we perform, we remain the person that we are and do not cease to be until the end.
—
Papapetrou’s works are on display at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Australia for her solo exhibition, ‘A Performative Paradox’, until Sunday 14 July 2013. Find out more: www.ccp.org.au
