Artists Genesis Breyer P-Oridge, Colette Justine aka Colette, and K8 Hardy discuss their work in relation to collage, gender and feminism on a panel held at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art on October 26, 2013. Each artist on the panel manipulate different mediums (music, fabric, displays, photography, the human body, etc), applying collage techniques to their works, playing around with notions of gender, and the feminists’ perspective on identity and personae.
Genesis talked about her involvement with COUM Transmissions music, performance art collective, and music with bands Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, and Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth (T.O.P.Y.) arts, magic collective. Genesis touches on collage through the cut-up vis-à-vis Beat author William S. Boroughs, usage of ritual and sigil work, and the meeting of Genesis’s late wife Lady Jaye and their project of the “Pandrogyne” (a third being) through bodily modifications to look like one another.
Colette Justine, who goes by Colette talks about her aesthetic of blending the personal and public space in her creation of sculptors, street art, installations, and public structures. Colette’s collages consist of using soft fabrics, found objects, and paint to create the magical and fantasy infused with the everyday aspects of life, along with the mixing of different historical fashion styles, and mythology. Colette’s work touches on subjects like seduction, dreaming, sleeping, death, identity, the female form and personae (Justine).
The youngest of the three artists K8 Hardy is a performance artist whose collages include elements of pop culture mixed with diverse mediums, such as photography, sculpture, and video. K8 Hardy’s collage work explores tension and imperfections through juxtaposition as a disruption and challenge to patriarchal aesthetics.
Fashioning Personae: Collage, Gender, and Feminism – Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Colette Justine aka Colette, & K8 Hardy
