Friend of Dorothy. Julie Clarke (2011)This is my response to Mark's last artwork. It's comprised of a yellow plastic child's construction helmet, on which I've written the word Toto on the peak with pink permanent marker. On the outside rim of the helmet (which cannot be seen in this photograph) I've transposed the words (also in pink permanent marker) by French theorist Michel Foucault, who, whilst discussing Carl Westphal's Archiv fu Neurologie (1870) particularly his paper 'on contrary sexual feeling' stated that Westphal in fact invented the term 'homosexual '. Foucault concludes that prior to that time 'the sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species' (History of Sexuality, 1976:43). I attached to this helmet, pink netting I cut from a young girl's fairy dress. I then sewed on pink sequins and wrote on the bottom of the fabric the words gay, nancy boy, queen, cream puff, poofter, fudge packer, queer, negative terms often used to describe homosexual males. Hegemonic masculinity tends to reify and reinforce particular gender stereotypes and so this was my attempt to break down the concept that all men are, or should be strong, all women, weak, vulnerable fairy princesses, which is generally accepted now, but there are still misconceptions about gay and straight people.
Whilst I was thinking about how I might respond to Mark's artwork I looked again at the photograph of him wearing a child's pink jumper as a mask, which tended to make him look a little like a rabbit or dog with floppy ears. The Wizard of Oz was screened last week on television and as I was watching I thought about Dorothy's friends - her dog Toto, the straw man, the tin man and the lion without a heart, all rather defined and enhanced by their relationship to Dorothy, but all the same, rather queer (in the usual sense of the word) - unusual or strange. Since homosexual men were often referred to as 'he's a friend of Dorothy' I thought it appropriate to use this as a title. I look forward to Mark's response, which he will hand me on Friday.
Whilst I was thinking about how I might respond to Mark's artwork I looked again at the photograph of him wearing a child's pink jumper as a mask, which tended to make him look a little like a rabbit or dog with floppy ears. The Wizard of Oz was screened last week on television and as I was watching I thought about Dorothy's friends - her dog Toto, the straw man, the tin man and the lion without a heart, all rather defined and enhanced by their relationship to Dorothy, but all the same, rather queer (in the usual sense of the word) - unusual or strange. Since homosexual men were often referred to as 'he's a friend of Dorothy' I thought it appropriate to use this as a title. I look forward to Mark's response, which he will hand me on Friday.
When I look at this hard and soft veil, it reminds me of a sea creature or spermatozoa - the beginning of a new species?
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