Saigon

Title: Saigon

About:

This work blurs masculine and feminine gender constructs, leaving the viewer to gaze at an overtly sexual androgynous person wearing a traditional R\u1ed3ng mask and sitting astride a mask of Chú T\u1ec5u. Both of which are common during the Tet festival.

The androgynous body can be viewed as being borderless and transcends any form of national culture. Androgyny occupies a grey area, one which challenges both the heterosexual and formal society. The imagined community to which they may or may not intentionally belong is in constant flux as society\u2019s acceptance changes either leaning towards a more liberal viewpoint or towards fascist or religious moralistic intolerance where only the heterosexual is seen as a norm.

Assigned genders have been explored by the British Cultural Engineer Genesis P.Orridge (1950 - 2020), who became famous in the late 1970s for his part in the COUM art group. COUM \u201cpractised a form of communal living\u201d (McCallum, C. 2008, p.2) that allowed members to break the boundaries between art and life, creating \u201cmodern primitive rituals that were about freeing the mysteries of the body\u201d (McCallum, C. 2008, p.2). COUM was described by the then British Tory MP Nicholas Fairbairn as \u201cwreckers of civilization\u201d (McCallum, C. 2008, p.1).

Genesis P.Orridge started in the 1970s developing an androgynous persona. He and his partner, Lady Jane (1969 - 2007) in a pandrogyn project had over 17 plastic surgery operations so that they could look alike. He believed \u201cwe live in a world where the environment is very modern and our behaviour is prehistoric... until the human species changes which includes its body we will not survive\u201d (YouTube, 2006).

McCallum, C., Guaranteeing Disappointment, 2008, Available at:

Orridge, G.P., Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H3NCqEbgjU