|
|
|
|
home |
Claude Cahun - Womyn Warrior Serena Turley Claude
Cahun’s
work was influenced by hir own sexuality.
A transgender, Cahun felt that hir queerness gave hir “a general
freedom of behaviour” that allowed hir to mix the masculine and feminine
characteristics of hir personality in order to explode the gender dichotomy.
(Kimberly online) Indeed,
the entire body of Cahun’s work attempts to deconstruct the stable subject
of gender. For Cahun, gender was
not a static concept. Instead,
Cahun believed that gender was fluid and constantly changing throughout a
person’s life. According to
Steven Harris: “Her work is remarkable
for the way in which she becomes both the subject and the object of her work,
bringing herself into existence as an artist and a writer in a way that, at
the same time, puts any secure notion of identity into question… with its
emphasis on negation and… it’s critique of modernist and naturalist
aesthetics; the erosion of the foundations of a secure, stable identity was a
significant feature of the surrealist project, as it tried to put the logic
and forms of bourgeois culture into question through a regression to the dream
or the transcription of automatic thought… for Cahun, this involves a
challenge to the verities of sexual difference, and an undoing of the role of
art and artist, in the very attempt to negotiate a space for herself as a
female artist and intellectual in a patriarchal culture.”
(91) This
can definitely be seen in Cahun photography.
Cahun appears in various forms of cross-dress in all of hir
self-photos, attempting to blend the masculine and feminine aspects of hir
identity so that there is no distinction between the two.
Cahun also photographs hirself in front of mirrors, as well as bursts
of hirself so that the line between self and reflection is blurred.
In this way, Cahun attacks the restrictions placed on hir because of
hir gender and tries to formulate a more inclusive alternative. Cahun
uses symbolism in hir sculpture to blur gender lines.
This accomplishes Cahun’s goal of furthering the deconstruction of
gender as a stable subject. Hill
argues that: “In her negotiation of
her own position as a wom[y]n artist in a patriarchal culture, who is in fact
seeks not to insert herself in that culture, but who is opposed to a
philosophically and ethically, Cahun attempts to find a female relation to
desire and proposes through this uncanny compound image of the female phallus
that interrogates us with its gaze.”
(102) By
combining the symbolic aspects of sex, Cahun disrupts sex/gender distinctions
and makes the viewer question, “What is a womyn?” Cahun’s
art was also used for a broader political purpose.
Unfortunately, Cahun was arrested by the Gestapo on July 25, 1944 and
was imprisoned until May 8, 1945. While
in prison, the majority of Cahun’s work was destroyed and the remainder of
hir work is only now being recovered. Claude
Cahun escaped execution by the Germans but died in 1954 from an illness sie
developed while in prison. Claude
Cahun lived a remarkable life and is a true womyn warrior because the battles
sie fought were personal battles that impacted society in general.
Perhaps Cahun’s art was a means for hir to create a space in which
sie could be accepted for being transgender.
In any case, Cahun’s work helped to lay the foundation for a broader
movement of gender benders who, like Cahun, seek to blur the distinction
between male/female, pink/blue. Bibliography: Cahun, Claude. Photographe. Paris. Musees: 1999., Camhi, Leslie, “A Forgotten Gender
Bender,” ARTnews, November 1999, pp. 168-70.
Chadwick, Whitney, “Mirror Images: Wom[y]n, Surrealism, and
Self-Representation,” Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998., “Claude Cahun: I am in
Training Don’t Kiss Me,” Z Gallery, retrieved 9-15-01, <http:/binland.org/scamp/Cahun/index.html>,
Daigle. You can contact Serena at serena_turley@yahoo.com.
|
|
home | current issue | veronica's literary corner | archives | submissions | staff | contact | links
|
||
Cahun was a surrealist artist who focused on the subject of gender in her
photography and sculpture, as well as in writing and hir daily life.