Wits School of Arts (ETDs)

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Browsing Wits School of Arts (ETDs) by Author "Genovese, Nicola"

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    The Steel Fig Leaf: Exploring the Grotesque Ambivalence of the Male Body and Its Masculinities through Sculpture, Performance Art, and Theatre
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-09) Genovese, Nicola; Doherty, Christo
    The practice-based research described in this thesis sought to develop imagery in visual and performative artworks capable of engendering and embodying new perspectives on the male body and performed masculinities. The project involved three phases: pure sculpture, sculpture activation using the male body in performance, and theatre performance, the latter focusing on northern Italian masculinities. The key concepts to emerge from the investigation were ambivalence, parody, and the aesthetic category of the grotesque. During the research, I developed a sculptural practice characterised by a craft approach and deploying heterogeneous materials – including textiles, a medium historically associated with the fabric art movement and feminism. As far as performative practice is concerned, my first approach was to challenge the rules of the white cube by attempting to transform spectators into an audience. My next approach was to engage with the specificities of the theatre as a performance context and the challenges for a fine artist working on a stage. The development of my practice was supported by theoretical reflection resulting from a critical engagement with feminism, queer discourse and masculinities studies, culminating in a partial affirmation of the direction taken by the new materialist strand of feminism. This research approaches the male body and its grotesque features through the figure of the flaccid penis as the starting point for questioning the dominant theoretical paradigm of the male body, the phallus, and violence. The materiality of my sculptures and performances addresses the entanglement of biology and culture, challenging the hegemony of the social constructivist approach in contemporary art. By exposing and highlighting the varieties of Italian masculinities, this research critiques the tendency in current academic discourse to depict straight white men as a monolithic category of oppressors. The imagery I develop through my sculptures and performance exposes behavioural, aesthetic, and bodily nuances that gesture towards the complexity occluded by contemporary understandings of masculinity.