‘As blank and perfect as the sphinx – only more modern and wearing LOTS of make-up’: this was the hook for transgender artist Justin Vivian Bond in choosing childhood icon Karen Graham as the subject of My Model / MySelf. The exhibition, closing this week at London’s Vitrine Gallery, explores the impact that the former Estée Lauder model had on the young artist.
Previously described as an ‘art activist’, Mx Justin Vivian Bond has worked extensively to support LGBT groups and causes, using cabaret, film and performance to protest issues such as Russia’s LGBT stance. Bond prefers ‘mx’ as a prefix, wishing to associate in full with neither sex. ‘If I felt there was a clearly defined place for me to go, where I would be welcomed and at peace, I would surely have gone there many years ago’.
Bond works with a very open artistic practice – writing novels, painting, singing, and performing cabaret that New York writer Hilton Als described as ‘the best of his generation’. My Model / MySelf brings together video work, performance, print, sculpture and watercolour in one installation. The watercolours make up a big part of the show, depicting the faces of Bond and Graham and focusing on the often obsessive interest that teens take in their idols. Bond’s relationship with Graham is especially thought-provoking as it marks the search for identity for young trans children.
Drawing parallels with 70s book My Mother My Self: The Daughter’s Search for Identity, this looks at the need for inspiration from outside the traditional family unit. The aspirational image of heightened femininity is impressed throughout the exhibition, with retro, glossy magazine covers and chintzy wallpaper stamped with Graham’s perfectly made-up face.
Bond speaks of ‘external stimuli’ being the very thing that allowed the creation of ‘an image of myself and for myself where I was able to live in a private state of grace’, yet there is recognition that this need for validation from outside sources comes from an inherent failure in traditional social and familial structures.
Then again, ‘maybe it’s simply a search for peace’.
My Model / MySelf closes this weekend, 13 June at Vitrine Gallery
