From Mark Feeney’s article for The Boston Globe:
PROVIDENCE – In a sense, the title of “The Performative Self-Portrait” is redundant. Any self-portrait, in any medium, is a performance. A self-portrait presents a certain aspect of the maker’s self and in emphasizing that aspect makes the image a version of performing.
“The Performative Self-Portrait” runs at the RISD Museum through Nov. 5.
The show’s curators, Conor Moynihan and Matthew Kluk, are well aware of this and have something more specific in mind with the title. Here performativeness is a stylization of presentation, often for larger ends (ideological, thematic, even art historical). A fair number of the 50 or so images qualify as transgressive – those faces are in your face – kicking performativeness into overdrive.
