O' To Be But A Simple Gentleman

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2020

 

Our state of selfdom relies on the civil and moral freedom of those around us, as Rousseau suggests. Our individuality is reactive to how we are seen by others, we create multifaceted layers of the self to disguise our true form, the freedom that we sacrifice when we join a civil society (Rousseau and Vaughan, 1962).

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O’ To Be but a Simple Gentleman is based on the story of a man born a woman, who masquerade for many years as multiple personas seeking validation, respect and the sophisticated lifestyle of a gentleman of the early 1900s. He had many names but the one that he could not run from was Colonel Victor Barker.

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The project is a response to that longing, the fragmented desire to find one’s self and to feel whole within one’s own body. I explore the complexity of gender identity and the fragments of truth, desire and hiding while trying to find the self through both the screen and lens of the camera. Living under quarantine forced by a global pandemic we are both free to express ourselves yet trapped in a modern globalised society.  In order to see clearly, we must first blur the lines between truth, desire and identity.