THE MANIFEST : Clouding our binary ideas of gender
The word manifest describes what a thing (a boat, a person, a vessel) may hold - its contents. Taking her cue from this definition, in her latest body of work Lisa Tomasetti reflects on gender identity and the role contemporary photographic portraiture plays in the representation of the ‘female’ image. Does it capture or construct identity?
Through the constancy and indifference of clouds, Tomasetti responds to historic, costumed representations of ‘authentic’ gender. In the past, the ephemeral nature of clouds defied scientific classification. Artists saw them as anti-structure, anti-order and representative of the complexity of human mood or aspiration. Clouds were the transportation of gods and angels, signifying the intermediate world between the hidden and the visible.
A new representation and possibility for an entirely individual identity is asserted in this series, one that seems to be as natural and free-formed as the clouds themselves. Each model celebrates the construction of their re-versioned female self in its emergent form, defying the constriction of their physical representations and challenging the historic classifications of their gender identity. Utopia and dystopia symbolically collide in transformative ecstacy. “Manifest” is a manifesto for new ways of capturing gender in photographic form.
