Embodiment of a Happening: identity
This sculpture is part of a triptych—a series of wearable pieces. In this work, I explore queer identity by appropriating the triangle as a queer symbol, incorporating labels, and using the snake motif. The snake has long symbolized queerness, as its act of shedding skin evokes transformation and defiance of societal norms.
With these wearable sculptures, inspired by artists like Louise Bourgeois, I examine the queer body and how others perceive queer identity in both public and private spaces.
By appropriating and reclaiming the triangle—originally imposed on the queer community during Nazi persecution in the Second World War—I challenge its historical meaning. The snake symbol allows me to explore queer objecthood, performativity, and bodily acts that resist the homogeneous gender system. Tongues in the form of labels invite audience participation, as people inscribe words about me, turning labels into an identity shaped by others. The sculpture weighs 40 lbs to represent the burden of these labels and the stigma they carry.
Activating the sculpture involves not only wearing it, but also internalizing and externalizing the embodied experience of queerness, occupying a racialized body in public, queer objecthood, and the gaze. The entanglement between these experiences—and the interplay of public and private spaces—is what the wearable sculpture's performativity allows you to encounter. This wearable aspect investigates the relationship between moving through the world as a visible queer immigrant and experiencing the literal and metaphorical weight of bronze materiality.
