Sexing the Colorlines: Black Sexualities, Popular Culture, and Cultural Production
'Me And Pac And Snoop' + 'Variable:Posture'
Department of Art, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA USA
Poroi 7, 2 (June 2011)
http://dx.doi.org/10.13008/2151-2957.1099
Title: Me and Pac and Snoop
Date: 2010
Medium: Video
This work confronts constructions of masculinity in depictions of rap musicians. Having lived in Los Angeles during the earlier part of my life, these two figures played a significant role in the visual cultural landscape that I experienced. During this performance, I activate the two figures by positioning myself within their gaze. Utilizing this relationship, I attempt to maintain an upper body muscular flex for as long as possible. Once I am no longer capable of holding the flex I relax, still within their gaze. In exhausting the capacities of my body, I seek to open questions of reality, representation and the relationship between them.
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Title: Variable: Posture
Date: 2010
Medium: Video
This work plays with the performance of gender. Utilizing both the concept and the act of 'posturing,' in this piece I contemplate the way bodies are understood visually. Intentionally out of focus and situated in a grid, the formal decisions of the work illustrate the role of ambiguity in perceptions of gender. The figure enters each frame simultaneously, assumes a different pose, freezes for a brief moment, and then exits.
© Ambrose Naqeeb Stevens, 2011.