Becoming Monstrous: Queer Feminist Reimagination of Bodies, Spaces and Practices
Engaging with 1970s feminism and transgender studies through the exploration of the body and (contact) surfaces, the gaze, the screen, myths, the archive and domesticity, this PhD project examine the manuscript of Liaozhai zhiyi (1766) at the Austrian National Library (Vienna) and the archives of the Freud Museum (London; Vienna). It investigates the archival objects and its relationship to my body through acts of resistance and the analogue, making/writing, which parody a “becoming monstrous” that disrupts the dualism of illusion/real, before/after, deception/astonishment, as a force that disturbs identity, system, order, and the patriarchal colonial epistemologies of sex, gender, and sexuality.
By integrating methods such as moving image, performance, ceramic, painting, and writing, the project provides a performative re-enactment of Liaozhai zhiyi’s mythical world — a Confucian fictional realm where forces manifest as women, non-binary, non-human entities and spirits, seducing and killing through metamorphosis. It explores the interplay between gaze and touch—both virtual and physical—reactivating sensory pleasure and incorporating the erotic as a queer feminist intervention in fine art practice.