Achjadi, Diyan

Identisploitation explores charged representations of identity in pop culture through painted paper figures, video art, and garments. The complicated public images of historical figures, including the iconic Black performer, Josephine Baker, are investigated, pulled apart, and recontextualized as exaggerated, lifesize paper dolls. Grotesque embodiments of evangelical, conservative American femininity are satirized through character performance in video. Historical costumes and unattainable beauty standards are stretched and sewn into unwearable garments. Identisploitation is influenced by the transgressive work of Vaginal Davis, Grace Jones, Bobby Conn and other fearless artists who inhabit the outskirts of the mainstream art world. The concepts of disidentification, the oppositional gaze, camp, and satire provide a critical and (pop) cultural framework, primarily through the texts of bell hooks and José Estéban Muñoz. Identisploitation asks these questions: What do pop cultural representations look like recontextualized through a Black feminist lens? How does a garment critique the cultural establishment? This thesis project explores historical representations of race, gender, and sexuality, and their lasting significance into contemporary visual language and pop culture through my particular point of view as a Black femme visual artist.

This thesis investigates the difficulties of reclamation and decolonization within the context of Hong Kong, recognizing the fluidity of how decolonization is defined, and the transitional nature of both people and place. Through printmaking and the metaphor of the Chinese squatting body, the artist examines how the squatting body can embody the transitional and transformational qualities of Hong Kong that express the hybridity and complexity of Hong Kong’s identity and colonial history. By combining Frantz Fanon’s definition of decolonization and Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic model, the artist argues that there is potential for political discourse within the space of Hong Kong to be resolved without enforcing a friend/enemy relationship, which often escalates towards violence, which is seen through the 2019-2020 protests. This research also shows the potential issues that may prevent the decolonization of Hong Kong due to the inherent conflict between Hong Kong’s identity as a part of the British colony, and its identity as a part of China.