Put Your Paws Up & Connie Lingua’s Night of Extreme Vanity

Time: 6-8pm

Venue: HIV Edmonton Gallery

9702 111 Ave. (Old Nina Haggerty Building)

PUT YOUR PAWS UP
Shane Golby

Nature or nurture: who are we, and how did we get to be the way we are? Were we born with certain pre-dispositions, or do environmental/social factors determine our personalities and behaviours? Are we born this way…do we choose to become something…or is our identity a combination of both ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ and thus more malleable than we might suppose?……

The art works in the exhibition Just Put Your Paws Up focus on chance, choice, and hidden or expressed desires and the role these play in the construct of personal identity. These works invite us to look at ourselves, asking us to consider how much of our identity is ‘real’ or ‘natural’, how much we create or choose, how much is determined by others, and how much of our ‘true’ natures we allow to be seen and what such expression might mean for both ourselves and to the social fabric in general….

Connie Linguia`s Night of Extreme Vanity
Antonio Bavaro

Connie Lingua’s Night of Extreme Vanity documents a professional drag queen’s process in one evening through digital photography: makeup, performance, backstage, working the crowd & defrocking. By taking a close view at the performative aspects of the process, the photographic qualities of the physical aspects, and the emotional geography of the highly ritualistic gender binary, we will be able to stand back and see many steps of that 8 hour process in one viewing. Never having this process documented before, we see the subject at their most vulnerable & most powerful, most feminine but slightly masculine, in adoration & envied. We also see right into the personal chaos of Antonio Bavaro’s hectic home-life & multi-faceted lifestyle: how can 2 people strong personalities live within one vessel? Many people have preconceived notions of what it is to be a drag performer, and hopefully this project will debunk some of those myths the audience may have about glamour, performance & the ubiquitous identity of a drag queen.