Body of Art and Gender Fluidity

In the Realms of the Unreal, Henry Darger, 20th Century

Today, thousands of people in Seattle will celebrate Queer Pride. One of the important shifts of our recent history has been a bold challenge to the inaccuracy of an absolute gender binary. Artists have been at the forefront of these societal shifts, creating works that challenge the assumptions of what our bodies should look like and how they should act. These “new” ideas are far from being exclusively modern, however. Excerpts from Paidon’s Body of Art include complexities of gender fluidity as early as the 3rd century BC. Below are a few.

Henry Darger, Sansinia

Henry Darger’s “Vivian Girls” (…) look like the angelic young girls of the magazines and media from Darger’s day, except he often rendered them with penises. Today, from our more gender-fluid point of view, they might be considered the earliest transgender superheroes. – Artsy

Nature Study, Louise Bourgeois, 1996

…Bourgeois’ sculpture was inspired by an eighteenth-century marble in the Louvre by F.A. Franzoni (Trone of a Priestess of Ceres), in which two winged sphinxes sit guarding a throne. Doing away with the head, arms and wings, Bourgeois (1911–2010) draws attention
to the ambiguous sexuality of her creature, which she claimed was a symbolic self-portrait. The six breasts represent her nurturing role as a mother and wife, providing for her husband and three sons. While the claws symbolize the defensive matriarch, guarding those she loves, Bourgeois described the phallus as “the subject of my tender-ness … after all, I lived with four men … I was the protector.”…  – Artspace

 

Ventura with Her Husband
/ The Bearded Woman Magdalena, Jusepe de Ribera, 1631

The female subject, Magdalena Ventura, was in her early fifties at the time, and was well known for her masculine features and long beard. The Latin inscription on the plinth to the right describes her as “a great wonder of nature.” Ventura bore three sons, although all were grown by the time this painting was made; the baby at her breast is perhaps symbolic of her maternity, as are the bobbin and the shell lying on top of the plinth. – Artspace

Guanyin of the Southern Sea, artist unknown, 11-12th Century AD

According to one legend, male same-sex love was introduced into Japan by the founder of the True Word (Shingon) sect of Japanese esoteric Buddhism, Kūkai. Historians however, point that this is probably not true, since Kūkai was an enthusiastic follower of monastic regulations. Some Bodhisattvas change sexes in different incarnations, which causes some to associate this to homosexuality and transgenderism. Guanyin, Avalokiteśvara, and Tara are known to have different gender representations. – Wikipedia; LGBT themes in mythology

Sleeping Hermaphroditos, artist unknown, 3rd-1st Century BC

Originally intended as a joke at the viewer’s expense, The Sleeping Hermaphroditus is an ancient marble sculpture depicting Hermaphroditus in life size. You can learn more about this artwork in this article in the New York Times.

Want to learn more about all of these artworks? Visit Artspace; The Art of Gender Fluidity.