Trans-formations

Coming across Maltese artists who challenge conventional art is rare, let alone those who use social taboo as the subject of their art.  Norbert Francis Attard is a local artist with a global consciousness. His installations, photography, digital works and videos interrogate the transmuting spatial and cultural boundaries of the contemporary world. Last year, Attard’s artistic stimulus extended into the field of gender identity with Third Gender, a 3-part project consisting of hermaphroditic sculptures, androgynous portrait photographs and a video documenting the process of gender transformation. The project, conducted in the Southern state of North Carolina, was a social comment on the unfixed state of one’s gender. With Androgyny, Attard exposed the blurred line between what is commonly understood to be either male or female through the photographic analysis of individuals whose appearance does not quite fit into either category. This uncertainty may stretch beyond the parameters of an image to that which remains hidden.

By using objects traditionally associated with a particular sex, Attard created assemblages suggestive of a male/female genital crossover in the Hermaphrodite series. What if this hybridism is intentional or a deliberate complete shift? Trans-Formations was a visual record exploring gender conversion through the work of make-up artist Brie Reeder and hair stylist Jay Bullock whose job was to emulate the opposition. The video medium allowed Attard to capture the work-in-progress that showed the transition from beginning to end product.  Not only did the artist reveal the lifestyle experienced by some, but the proximity between dualities to which greater distance is normally applied. Through this piece, Attard deals with the impermanence of identity and the individual contradictions of mind/body.

The participants for Trans-Formations were: Rob Peterson, Raffe Purnsley, Tara Odorizzi and Kalen Gaulden.
www.norbertattard.com