Piece 1:
Transmasculine performance artist and stunt person/bodybuilder, Cassils uses his own body as a medium, undergoing intense physical challenges to show that the human body is always in a state of change. Cassils frames their physical form, not as an inherited vessel but as a canvas constantly changing, almost like a malleable material. exemplified in the contrasting gender stereotypes within the image below.
“I use my physical body as sculptural mass to rupture societal norms,” Cassils explained in an earlier interview with The Huffington Post. “It is with sweat, blood and sinew that I construct a visual critique and discourse around physical and gender ideologies and histories.”
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| Cassils, still from "Fast Twitch//Slow Twitch," 2011, two-channel video installation, TRT 11:08. Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Fine Art, NY. |
Piece 2:
Another artist on view, Amy Elkins, addresses alternative manifestations of masculinity, ones that privilege softness as much as strength, in her photographs of young male dancers in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her series “Danseur” depicts young men, ages 12 to 18, who challenge gendered expectations by combining exceptional athleticism with grace, vulnerability and quiet self-composure.
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| Amy Elkins, "Danseur, Lucas, Age 12, 6th Year in Royal Danish Ballet School, Copenhagen," 2012, archival inkjet print, 30 x 40 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York |
“I am fascinated with the art and sport of ballet and contemporary dance, specifically with young men who push past gender stereotypes associated with dance and challenge societal notions of masculinity,” Elkins explained in a previous interview with HuffPost. Her images show how the boundaries that separate art and sport, performance and identity, masculine and feminine, are far more mercurial than they first appear.
Piece 3:
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| thers, from "Tryouts, Boxing," 2015, archival pigment print, 36 x 30 inches.Courtesy of the artist. |
Then, in his series “Tryouts,” photographer Ryan James Caruthers captures the dangerous consequences a fragile masculinity can have on men themselves. The artist mined his memories growing up as a closeted queer boy and an artist in an environment that didn’t acknowledge his fledgeling instincts. “Growing up in a suburban New Jersey town, males my age were always preoccupied with the sport,” he told HuffPost. “I had a constant disconnect from traditional forms of masculinity, as my interests were in other areas.”
With his thin, pale frame, Caruthers looked and felt nothing like the conventionally macho figures accepted by his peers. His photos revisit this complex and painful phase in Caruthers’ adolescent life before he came to terms with his body, his desires and himself. Caruthers goes through the motions of various sporting events ― swimming, wrestling and baseball, among others ― his spindly frame and distant gaze resembling more the muse of a Pre-Raphaelite painting than a jock in a yearbook.
The traditional tenets of masculinity ― power, stoicism and dominance ― are holding men back rather than urging them forward. Today, it is crucial to look past feeble and outdated understandings of masculinity and explore the potential of human beings untethered by societal expectations and gender norms.
The artists of “ManUp!” offer alternative understandings of masculinity that don’t rely on notions of biology or stereotypes, but rather view manhood as a complex network of rituals and desires, distinctly organized in every individual in which they appear. They reject the idea of an “ideal man” against which all others will fail to measure up, and in doing so, support the idea that people should be free to live their lives ― free to express themselves through their appearance, actions and gestures, molding their gender identity like a work of art along the way.
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