Objectifying a Queer Body Thinking Through Materiality is a research project that originates from my personal experience as a queer body and which expands into thinking about queerness in contemporary western society. I have opened up a dialogue with molds, materials and processes to think metaphorically about the intrinsic relation between bodies and objects.

What if I understand objects as bodies, and bodies as objects? Would I find the same values we use to (re)produce objects in contemporary society as we do to (re)produce bodies? Could molds then be understood as the gender norms—the status quo—through which we (re)produce fixed body-objects and identities?

Molds are often perceived as static; they don’t allow change, as they are meant to replicate the same shape over and over. I take on molds less as tools but as subjects themselves and collaborators with whom to speculate and reflect with.

The project unfolds through three distinct explorations—The Hair, The Finger(s), and A Condom—each using material and form to reflect on how identity is shaped, contained, or undone. By putting molds into conversation with queerness, the work examines the tensions between bodies and the structures that seek to fix them.

You can read more about the project in the research text here.

^{The Finger(s)}

1. THUMB