Oreet Ashery
website representation
Oreet Ashery is a London based interdisciplinary artist working in live art, video, 2-D image making, objects, text and the internet. "Ashery is interested in intersection of life and art, the intimate and the professional." What I found particularly interesting was the fact that she will produce work as different characters, almost as a writer has a pen name.
The study above is from a piece she did collaboratively with Shaheen Merali where she transformed into a black male and he into a white woman. It was really interesting. She has an odd but entertaining process video on her website. The piece was called "Colored Folks" and is performative in nature. “Articulated here is a suggestion that the performance effected more than the temporary switch in the categories of race and gender. Rather, there is a sense of the relinquishing the culturally fixed boundaries of subjectivity – the ‘who I am’ – and release on desire into a movement of becoming that is not attached to an already fantasized and impossible object, but has an uncertain outcome”(Jean Fisher on Colored Folks). I really enjoyed the concept and it made me think of my original direction of doing characters and performing stereotypes/race.
"On a more personal note I experience feminism as part of the intricate relationships of gender, cultural constructs and notions of power, race, religion, background, life style, and ethnicity. My interest in masculinity and as such my own gender performances of male characters and the inclusion of male actors is set to explore the relationships between women and masculinity and women and cultural identity." (Ashery).I wish there were more pictures from these performances. Id like to dabble with performance some more. I think it might be a rewarding aspect to my work. I feel as if I haven't done any real performance work. I think Ashery was very successful in this piece.
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