altogether different: from black to blonde and back again
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like to be a blonde; an ambivalent practice of introjection and projection, and of metaphoric and metonymic strategies of displacement (Mercer, 1994: 82). Both exhibitions present the viewer with a visual that invites us to indulge our fantasies through a hands-on engagement with an identity that can be played with, reconstructed and redefined in a way that is, to paraphrase Baumann, ‘a freely chosen game, a theatrical presentation of the self’ (1994: 18). But if the modern ‘problem of identity’ is how to construct an identity and keep it stable, then the postmodern ‘problem of identity’ is primarily how to avoid fixation and keep the options open (Baumann, 1994: 18). Here identity as a practice is dressed from the start as an individual task where it is up to the viewer to explore conventional connections between colour and difference through a fantasy space. The invitation to see, feel, and experience becomes a play with difference in a make-believe world that looks towards an identity never completed and always ‘in process’ (Hall and du Gay, 1994: 2). There is always too much or too little, an over determination or a lack, but never, as Hall writes, a proper ‘fit’ (Hall and du Gay, 1994: 2) There are clear parallels here between a literal and a theoretical exercise: taking the concept of identity apart, putting it back together in a temporary arrangement or, as Jones (1995: 100), writes ‘working-it’ and seeing what works in a postmodern space itself. Subject to the play of difference this marks the move away from an essentialist concept of identity as fixed – in terms of what counts as ‘being blonde’ or ‘being black’ – and towards one instead that calls into question the bit
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feminist review 81 2005
altogether different
of the self which is always-already ‘the same’ (Hall, 2001). To take up the invitation that both artists offer is to confront the distortions of institutionalized representations by exploring a multiplicity of ‘other’ subjectivities: this functions as a critique of difference that can destabilize a ready-to-wear identity in favour of an ultimate destination which can only, deliberately, remain unsettled. So is blonde the new postfeminist, postcolonial colour as Gregory asks? Can it mark the move away from a stereotypical representation of ‘the blonde’ as ‘fairy princess’ (Rapunzel with hair as beautiful as spun gold), ‘stupid’ (pretty vacant) or ‘passive sex object’ (always ready for all sexual advances) and use colour instead to say something different: ‘like y power and strengthy.?’ as Gregory suggests (www.iniva.org/xspaceprojects/gregory). Perhaps this could be thought of as the creation of an interrogatory space where both sites – exhibition and website – work as a meeting point to bring the viewer to a place of confrontation with notions of ‘blonde’ and ‘black’, and about a temporary attachment to one or the other, or to neither. The point is to engage (touch, feel, think, and imagine) in order to be,
Jane Round
feminist review
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