Downstairs (detail)

This thesis essay is an account of an auto-ethnographic research about how personal identity is formed, performed and represented. Its structure is experimental and it uses various and overlapping discursive strategies to engage the reader. It is informed by affect, queer and feminist theory, especially the writings of Judith Jack Halberstam on failure. It also draws from conceptions of identity encountered in postcolonial theory, critical pedagogy, girl studies and fat studies. I look into my working method through an examination of material and immaterial works. Playful artistic gestures, improvisation and messy installations are envisioned as acts of casual rebellion, or transgressive ways of making that deliberately register my work outside of the mainstream. I introduce several recent projects and contextualize them by means of storytelling. I also address my interest in attraction and repulsion, personal history and hierarchies of value.