Beyond the Body: Seeing the Self as Object in a Culture of Commodification

A guest blog by Gio Diokno, 4th year Theatre and Film Student, McMaster University

As part of English 4Y06 Research Practicum, I’ve been conducting research alongside the exhibit This is Me, This is Also Me. With the exhibit coming to a close, I’d like to share some of my final thoughts on the exhibit and its attempt to explore the self as a means to connect to others.

Having written about This is Me, This is Also Me for the McMaster Museum of Art blog twice before, I’ve touched upon issues of diaspora relating to works by Deanna Bowen and Jin-me Yoon in the exhibit, but the exhibit has so much more to offer and explore. Notably, the exhibit explores how the self is understood in different visual contexts and representations. One of my favorite ways in which this is explored is through the idea of seeing the self as an object, a manner of presentation that does not fully resemble a human form. From the exhibit, I’d like to discuss the works by Cathy Daley, Kent Monkman, and Doug Guildford.

The paintings by Cathy Daley explore the complex nature of the self. Two of the works exude turbulence with the complex strokes of paint that dominate the work and a third differs with its structured, geometric edges. All three of the works juxtapose these elements alongside the image of human legs. The legs function as a way to read the form as human, but it also speaks to the fragmented dissection of human bodies, specifically the female body. The pieces ask to consider the body as something more than just a “set of legs” and how bodies are treated as though they are decorative (with one of the pieces resembling geometrically sleek furniture usually found at Ikea). The juxtaposition of body and object in Daley’s practice points to the visual consumption of bodies as objects, overlooking their identity and complexity.

Continuing on the consumption of bodies, Kent Monkman’s pieces “Dreamcatcher Bra” and “Raccoon Jockstrap” explore the issue differently. These pieces explore Indigenous Two-Spirit identity and gender dichotomies as part of Monkman’s performance persona, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. However, the pieces also present how Indigenous identity is reduced to an aesthetic that becomes commodified through clothing. Indigenous identity undergoes an erasure, is appropriated, and re-sold as a decorative object to be worn and consumed by the masses. The reduction of an identity into a fashion statement points to how a culture (and its history) becomes forgotten under the guise of commercialization and continues to be exploited by colonialism. The pieces present a caricature of the contemporary fetishization of Indigenous culture into a visual aesthetic and bring viewers to contemplate the irony behind the contemporary consumption of this aesthetic,despite their ignorance of Indigenous people and their issues.