This Sex Which is Not One*

The trans-feminist movement addresses feminist issues from a transgender perspective. Similarly to other third-generation feminist movements, trans-feminism often examines the effect of body image and the oppressive and destructive power of the binary gender conception. According to this approach, gender-based oppression is associated with many other types of oppression related to race, status, and hetero-normative identity.

This discourse refers to the psychoanalytical tradition – particularly the writings of Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, and others – that contributes to the dismantling of the binary gender model ingrained in the linguistic unconscious. Additionally, it often refers to the influential critique proposed by Judith Butler, which depicts a breach in the feminist subject. Butler argues that a distinction should be made between sex and gender; these categories are not identical, and a deep rift separates the sexual body and the gendered body constituted by culture. Scholar Maria Lugones has proposed seeing the concept of "gender" as a colonialist invention that continues the traditional patriarchal view of a binary distinction between man and woman.

In light of contemporary trans-feminist discourse, this exhibition explores the works of Claude Cahun – a photographer active in France in the 1920s and considered one of the first artists to address the fluidity of gender identities. Cahun, born as Lucie Schwob, was Jewish and openly lesbian. In her works presented in this exhibition, the categories "man" and "woman" become fluid "conditions of the self." Her work was prophetic, heralding many contemporary artistic strategies. Cahun was known for her staged self-portraits influenced by the Surrealist movement.

In her photographed portraits she takes on different appearances: her head shaved, androgynous, a nymph, a Buddha, a theater actress, at times even an alien figure. The accessories are minimal, so that the figure itself generates most of the image's psychological meaning. These portraits challenge the representations of femininity and sexuality current in Cahun's time. Thus, for example, in one of her works she appears as a muscleman; inscribed on his costume, between two painted-on nipples, is the sentence, "I am in training, don't kiss me." In another famous photograph Cahun stands near a mirror, but she is not looking into it but rather at the viewers. In her works Cahun can be said to reflect herself, the viewer, and the Other.

Cahun engaged with the elusive nature of the concept of identity. Who is the "real" Claude Cahun? Is her costumed figure less authentic than her nude figure? Where is the boundary between her femininity and her masculinity? Cahun used the recurrent motifs of masks and mirrors as symbols revealing the ways in which people present themselves and their gender. In her words, "Under this mask, another mask. I will never be finished removing all these faces." Her commitment to the performative nature of gender, and to the gestures and acts that represent the changing ways in which the body is experienced, echo contemporary postmodernist, queer, and feminist theories.

Cahun was politically active and wrote radical books and essays on the subject of gender. She was influenced by the writings of psychologist and sexologist Henry Havelock Ellis, who proposed the possibility of a third sex that combines feminine and masculine properties, but is neither man nor woman. Her wide-reaching political activity has encouraged a broad, gendered reading of her delicate and intimate photographs, which propose a new definition of sexuality.

Alongside Claude Cahun, the exhibition presents works by artists Tanja Ostojić, Limor Orenstein, Liat Elbling, Kathe Burkhart, Michèle Sylvander, and Alona Friedberg.

* The title of the exhibition is based on Luce Irigaray's book This Sex Which is Not One, published in 1977.