Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Autonomy, Self-Care and Reclamation: Nonbinary Self-Imaging Praxis in Laurence Philomène’s Autobiographical Self-Portrait Series Puberty
Isabella Fincher
ABSTRACT:
Laurence Philomène’s Puberty is an autobiographical self-portrait project that documents the evolution of their non-binary transgender identity during hormonal replacement therapy. With their intimate series of colorful self-portraits taken in 2019-2021 at their home in Montreal, Philomène explores the juxtaposition and fusion of feminine and masculine identities and challenges the aesthetics and expectations of traditional gender presentation. Embodying the non-binary self-imaging praxis, the artist interrogates and destabilizes the construction, enactment, and embodiment of the gender binary and reframes representations of chronic illness, engaging in a creative intervention to dominant representations of disabled and transgender/nonbinary individuals in visual culture. Thus, the artist engages in the processes of non-binary cultural production, exploring the position and construction of a non-binary identity as distinct from cisgender and transgender identity formation. Through the analysis of Philomène’s work, this paper provides a methodology for the non-binary disabled praxis that moves beyond binary representations, empowering artists to express and communicate their embodied gender identity authentically and experientially. The self-portrait series featured in Puberty thus offers a critical intervention in photographic discourse, inviting viewers to reevaluate the visual construction of gender identity and the queering of sex and gender as an ongoing process of self-exploration, discovery, and reinvention.
keywords: chronic illness, hormone replacement therapy, non-binary, self-portrait photography, transgender