Rebirthday Self-presentation, Suppression and Externally Excessive Expression (hereafter referred to as “Rebirthday”) shines a light on the glamourous side of queer resistance. This thesis project seeks to complicate notions of marginality by exploring the long tradition of self-fashioned glamour as a survival tactic and form of world-making for non-normative people. Rebirthday investigates the evolution of my shifting identity by using self-fashioning and costuming as ways to manipulate the expression of my gender and identity.

Rebirthday materializes the personal interconnectedness between my artwork and my lived experiences. I re-imagine my social identity by combining sculptural installations with live performance and wearable objects. Through the customization and assemblage of found objects, my sculptures and performances engage with ideas of masking, mutation and self-making.

Rebirthday uses self- reflexivity as a methodology for asserting and acknowledging my positioning within this thesis project. As a methodology, self-reflexivity enables me to consciously and actively reference the artificiality of my identity through performance. Within this document, the differentiation between self-reflexivity and reflectivity is rooted in the idea that my reflexive positioning is embodied. I locate myself within the scope of my research via a reflective process.

Rebirthday is informed by Sara Ahmed’s writings on queer phenomenology concerning the relationship between bodies and objects, Dan Graham’s performance entitled Performer / Audience / Mirror (1975) involving his reflection on our perceptions of identity and Judith Butler’s feminist theories that reveal how our bodies perform and enact gender and identity. The primary point of my investigation is my own gendered identity and expression. My conceptual process is extremely anecdotal and autobiographical. I use my selfhood to explore the in-betweenness of my gender, my queerness and my shifting identity.

For me, rebirthday is every day.
I am performing at all times; my life alive, is a live performance.