From Embodiment to Identity

Abstract

Positionality I write as a Brazilian feminist artist and researcher based at Edith Cowan University, whose practice moves between Brazil and Australia, and between the roles of photographer, participant, and subject: I photograph other people, and I also place my own body in the work. My earlier involvement with the collective Maou (“MAOU”), which sought to turn invisible urban spaces into cultural ones, shapes my understanding of art as something made with public space rather than delivered into it. This displacement between cultural frameworks is not merely background to the research; it is the condition from which its central question arises: how identity is held, lost, and remade in the passage between cultural contexts. Introduction My art practice reflects the dynamic interplay between performative acts and the identities they construct, drawing on the philosopher of language J.L. Austin's concept of performative utterances, the philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler's extension of performativity to gender as a series of repetitive acts, and the literary critic and queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's expansion to broader spatial and cultural frameworks. These theories collectively inform my approach to artmaking, where I navigate gender as fluid and constructed within spatial and relational contexts, challenging traditional notions of gender and advocating for a more unfixed and unstable understanding of identity. In my art practice, I focus on photographing and representing diverse gendered bodies of adult participants within cross-cultural settings, specifically in Brazil and Australia. My work explores how these bodies perform and negotiate their gender identities, paying attention to the intersection of cultural, social, and individual influences that shape fluid and evolving expressions of gender. This approach is vital in feminist art practice, where centring gendered bodies and performance allows for an exploration of the politics of visibility, embodiment, and identity. Drawing on these theoretical frameworks, I critically examine the meaning of gendered embodiment through my photographic choices—pose, framing, and presentation—using gender theory to question identity construction, performance, and perception. This exploration is not only personal but also resonates with broader discourses on gendered bodies, particularly those marked by gender and race. My practice seeks to create a dialogue that extends beyond my individual experience, inviting my audience to consider the political implications of seeing, defining, and engaging with these bodies in art. For instance, in the context of Brazilian feminist art, my work aligns with other artists who centre gendered and racialised bodies in their practice, among them Rosana Paulino's Bastidores (fig. 8) and Priscila Rezende's Bombril (fig. 9). Through these representations, we collectively challenge neoliberal discourses that marginalise and other our bodies, a marginalisation that in Brazil is driven not only by neoliberalism but by an organised nationalist and religious-conservative backlash (Miskolci and Campana 729; Miskolci and Pereira 3). This makes the work feel newly urgent: as gender is made the focus of a moral panic used to justify repressive measures, insisting on the visibility of these bodies on their own terms is, now more than ever, a form of public resistance. Performative Acts: Language, Art, and Identity in My Practice Language philosopher John Langshaw Austin’s speech act theory revolutionised the understanding of language's performative dimension by illustrating how speech acts do not merely describe but enact changes within social contexts. Austin introduced the notion of "performative utterances", which actively alter the social status of the individuals involved (6). These utterances are neither true nor false; their success hinges on appropriate context and societal norms. For example, saying "I promise" creates an obligation, contingent on the conditions within which it is uttered. This concept underscores the power of language to shape social realities through its performative function (Austin 6). This concept of language as an active force rather than a passive reflection parallels my approach to art, where language and cultural symbols play a crucial role. In my practice, which navigates multiple languages and cultural contexts, the use of words and linguistic elements becomes a performative act in itself. For example, my incorporation of Portuguese and English in embroidered hammocks (as shown in fig. 1) is not just an aesthetic choice in my work but a deliberate act of bridging cultural and linguistic divides, reflecting the fluid and dynamic nature of identity as shaped by language and culture. Fig. 1: Patricia Amorim Da Silva. Body Presence Identity, 2023. Projection and embroidery on hammocks. Dimensions variable. Moores Building Contemporary Art Space, Perth. Austin's concept of performatives focusses primarily on how language enacts social realities. Beyond language, its significance for my practice extends to the context of gender identity, where I turn to Butler. Performative Identity: Bridging Butler’s Theory and Artistic Exploration Butler examines the limitations and expansions of Austin's speech act theory in Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (first ed.). Butler (15) advocates for a broader perspective that includes socio-historical meanings—the influence of historical context, power dynamics in communication, and cultural norms on the interpretation of speech acts. In Gender Trouble, from Thinking Series, Butler (187) applies Austin's performative utterances to the construction of gender, demonstrating that gender is not an inherent quality but rather a performance shaped by repeated actions and societal expectations—a process Butler (187) terms gender performativity. This insight closely aligns with my own artistic practice, where I challenge fixed notions of identity by employing performative acts such as language, visual representation, and cultural symbols to interrogate and redefine gendered and cultural constructs. Butler's theory suggests that performative acts repeat and enact societal norms, and my work engages with these performatives by reappropriating them in subversive ways (xxix). For instance, I intentionally blur, conceal, and reveal aspects of gender through my use of long-exposure photography or the manipulation of cultural symbols, mirroring the continuous enactment of gender through repeated social performances. These strategies situate my practice within a longer lineage of photographers who have used the medium’s own instabilities—blur, grain, concealment—to unsettle the legibility of the gendered body. Francesca Woodman’s long-exposure self-portraits, in which the moving body dissolves into its surroundings (fig. 2), treat photographic indistinctness as a way of asking where the self begins and ends (Keller). The Japanese Provoke movement of the late 1960s made a related wager through its aesthetic of blurred, fragmented, and materially textured imagery (fig. 3), resisting the documentary impulse that seeks to stabilise, define, and regulate bodies through visual representation (Dufour et al. 243). Read against this history, my long exposures and partial concealments are not isolated effects but part of an ongoing practice in which photographic technique is itself an argument about identity. As demonstrated in fig. 4, the interplay of lighter and darker regions within the image influences the viewer’s interpretation by revealing or concealing various body parts and their surroundings. The face, emerging clearly from the projections, including the chosen projection of a tree, adds layers of meaning and portrays the participant's identity in a nuanced manner. This projection reflects the participant's personal and emotional landscape, with the ancient tree symbolising strength and connection. This approach deepens the viewer’s understanding of the complex interplay between the body and the physical space it inhabits, illustrating how these interactions contribute to the construction and expression of gender identities. Fig. 2: Francesca Woodman. From Space 2, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975–76. Gelatin silver print. Sheet: 8 × 10 in. (20.3 × 25.4 cm). Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College; © Woodman Family Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, https://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/objects/2013.12.2. Reproduced under ss40, 103C Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) (exception: research or study). Fig. 3: Daidō Moriyama. Midnight Accident, Tokyo, 1969. Gelatin silver print. 13 × 18 5/8 in. (33.1 × 47.4 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York (Gift of the artist), https://www.moma.org/collection/works/56595. Reproduced under ss40, 103C Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) (exception: research or study). Fig. 4: Patricia Amorim Da Silva. Untitled series, 2023. Digital photograph. My engagement with these performative acts aligns with Butler's (159) idea that reappropriating such performatives can empower marginalised groups to disrupt and redefine the cultural meanings imposed upon them, challenging existing social structures and creating the potential for new futures through breaks with the past. In the context of my practice, the norms at stake are the binary and racialised conventions that dictate how a gendered body may appear; the futures are the still-unfixed identities these images hold open; and the past being broken from is the documentary tradition that treats the photograph as neutral evidence of a body rather than as a site where identity is actively made. Similarly, my work allows participants to assert control over their own identities: in Video 1, for instance, Orion does so through fluid movements and interactions with the projected images. Video 1: Patricia Amorim Da Silva. Photographic Session, 2023. Video recording. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDLcZLdyv