In the flesh: Exploring the self-portrait

Sun 30 Jul 2023

‘In the Flesh’ examines the body as a site of self-assertion and empowerment, with works ranging from performance, painting, photography, sculpture and video. These artists reveal cultural shifts and universal themes.

Julie Rrap

In this large-scale photograph Julie Rrap recasts renowned Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s painting Puberty 1894–95 — made a century earlier — to contest the trope of the male artist and his female muse, and the primacy of painting over photography. The artwork is one of nine that Rrap began in the 1980s after she travelled to Europe, where Munch’s work was attracting renewed interest. Disquieted by Munch’s depictions of women and confounded by the dearth of women artists included in European exhibitions of contemporary art, she restaged his paintings using herself as subject, photographing, collaging and hand-colouring the images before rephotographing them. While assuming the same pose as the vulnerable young woman in Munch’s painting, Rrap regards the viewer with a direct gaze in an overt challenge to age-old stereotypes.

Stelarc

Performance artist Stelarc has been engaged in various investigations of the body, the most well-known and dramatic of which are his body suspensions. Performed in various sites and situations around the world – including Japan, USA, Germany and Australia – Stelarc pierces his skin with hooks attached to load-bearing strings to suspend his body in different positions. Not all the performances have been static; his body has swung, spun, swayed and propelled itself. In some instances, Stelarc incorporated the amplified sounds of his heart beating and muscles stretching. In these documented performances, Stelarc explored what it means to be human, examining how the body is the site of human experience in a changing world affected by new technologies.

Tyza Hart

Tyza Hart works in a range of mediums, manipulating depictions of themself as a means of self-exploration, and to challenge common perceptions of gender and sex. Hart explains that their self-portraits are:

. . . driven by a childhood desire to be perceived as male. Resulting self-portraits – typically comprised of a characteristically male body and my face – depict ambiguously gendered selves. I explore transgender identity through this continual self-portraiture, which is politicised by my public failure to conform to gender norms when the works are exhibited. By resisting and engaging with popular understandings of transsexual narratives, I aim to highlight some alternatives to the strict binary understandings of gender.