jadeyumangshadowyfigures
Jade Yumang —Shadowy Figures ∕ ’’
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This ongoing series considers how film noir is constructed stylistically and narratively to disorient the audience to generate a level of uncertainty and deception, not just in its story arc, but more so on how queer characters implicitly and explicitly surfaced. Navigating the strict movie moral codes in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s, most of these characters' sexuality is formulated through crime scenarios where gay men are portrayed as deviant dandies and lesbians as menacing sadists. The sculptures and performance are a study on the nuances of queer semiotics that imbue this era.

My work primarily focuses on the concept of queer form. I use a variety of techniques to convey notions of phenomenology, affect, and queer as a process. This strategy is usually executed through three-dimensional, site-specific installation, and performance as a way to see how the body resists or submits through materiality vis-à-vis obsessive acts, strict parameters, repetition, and forms of discipline. This direction is guided through the tracing of historical amnesia, by means of myths, scandal trials, obscenity laws, and filmic tropes. I filter these events through meticulous techniques and create abstract shapes that initially come from a corporeal source.

Michelle Fattibene—Ribs Yen-Ting Chung—Serendipity Documentary of "Writing on the Body" Sara Jimenez—Ossuary (1) & (2)