User:Joevinci58/gap analysis

Gap analysis

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JJ Levine
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JJ Levine, a transgender and queer Montreal-based photographer, focuses his artwork on satirizing constructed gender norms by having his friends recreate feminine and masculine personalities.

Levine has had his artwork exhibited in multiple galleries across major cities within Europe and Canada alongside other notable artists such as Heather Cassils. Many of his colleagues, such as Cassils, have Wikipedia pages themselves, yet Levine still lacks one.

I found out about Levine through a Dazed article titled “The artists subverting the gender binary” while researching non-binary and transgender artists to include in my curation project. My reasoning behind the curation project and Wikipedia page are similar: diverse perspective and visibility. This article’s importance is its ability to not only emphasize an artist of a marginalized group, but also spread more transgender and queer perspective to an art world lacking diversity.

Transgender and queer individuals have faced a multitude of challenges becoming artists over the years. Institutions have mostly accepted cisgendered straight men’s work into museums given their pre-existing notoriety in the field. Unfortunately queer poverty rates, heteronormative ideals, and the gender binary have left queer individuals struggling to have their artistic concepts valued by institutions if they can even create the network or resources necessary to get them near an exhibition. The more queer artists and queer works that are highlighted the more queer people and queer statements can be normalized into institutions and work as inspiration for younger artists with similar identities.

Levine himself even discusses the importance of queer art from a queer perspective stating in an interview with Slate magazine’s photography blog Behold that he “celebrate[s] marginality from a place of familiarity and self-exploration as opposed to voyeurism."
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Growing up JJ Levine was gifted a point-and-shoot camera from his late mother who was a documentary filmmaker. His mother influenced him to begin documenting the people around him with his camera. He attributes her advice to his focus on portrait photography today.

Levine has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography and Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality and is pursuing a Masters in Fine Arts at Concordia University. He has also received grants from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts for his artwork.

He is best known for his three photo series Switch, Queer Portraits, and Alone Time.

In his Switch series Levine has sets of subjects stand next to each other in formal wear. For each pair he takes two photos, one in which each subject represents a masculine figure and the other feminine. Levine states that this photo series is meant to show how malleable and constructed gender really is.

The Queer Portraits series showcases Levine's interactions with queer friends, lovers, roommates, and acquaintances he runs into in his daily life. Through the portraits he wishes to express the "fierceness, beauty, and resistance through the aesthetic of [his] queer culture."

Alone Time is similar to the Switch series, but rather than photographing the couples in formal wear, Levine decides to shoot in a domestic setting. This set of photos is meant to both emphasize and criticize the constructive performativity of gender specifically within a hetero marital dynamic.

Levine has been featured in a number of exhibits including Trans Time, Gender Blender , and the Chromatic Festival.


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