Emma Chalmers
Giving the Slip
Giving the Slip began with a series of historical letters between a tailor and a female cross dresser, in which the cross dresser assumed a masculine persona in order to acquire a tweed suit. This unassuming act, made possible via the written word, was the point of departure in my research, as investigations into the various ways language operates within the LGBTQI community continued to shape my practice this year.
In these works, language, image and text overlap to form connections and understandings around the complexities of gender diversity. These complexities are bound together through mimicry, a visual navigator and metaphorical conduit between the visual and the textual. Mimicry also speaks to the variable ways non-binary and gender-diverse individuals have historically navigated states of visibility through forms of camouflage.
Folding the traces of letter writing, mimicry and the language of specific subcultures into painting, this work provides possibilities to re-imagine socially determined gender norms as blurred and manoeuvrable concepts with indeterminate and flexible endings.
