The Body as a Canvas
Gender?: A Question for the Audience (2017) was a performance at Mammal Gallery in Atlanta, GA where Dedman asked pairs of the audience to participate in dressing his body as a canvas of subjective masculinity, femininity, and non-binary gender presentations.
The artist dressed in nude undergarments and brought a rack of their own clothes for the participants to use as materials. The audience consisted of mostly queer, trans creatives that Dedman knows personally and has friendships with, but a few strangers participated.
The resulting looks from this collaborative social experimentation consisted of a regal masc, a bound femme, and a backwards them. As a trans artist, the performance came from the curiosity of "passing" as a certain socialized gender. Are clothes enough to be stealth? Why do we assume gender when corporeal reality remains full of strife?
Dress me masculine.
Regal Masc
Regal Masc
Dress me feminine.
Bound Femme
Bound Femme
Dress me non-binary.
Backwards Them
Backwards Them