Clarke, Elijah - Blog post 6

     After reviewing Xandra Ibarra’s website and videos I found that I was particularly drawn to Ibarra’s La Chica Boom series as well as her Ass Tassel Series, This is the End Pasties Series and Social Body Body piece. The Ass Tassel series, This is the End Pasties Series and the Social Body Body piece are all very different; a common theme of anthropomorphizing inanimate objects through sexuality runs through each of the pieces. The Ass Tassel series attaches tassels to gypsum representations of car headlights and frames each pair of headlights against a bright crimson background. In both the attaching of tassels and the seductive background color Ibarra is effectively sexualizing the car headlights for the audience. Similarly, for the This is the End Pasties Series Ibarra attaches huge pasties to the interior gallery walls inviting the viewer to imagine the huge body they could be attached to, however, in my view, the attaching of pasties to bare gallery walls also evokes a sense that the walls themselves are wearing the pasties. Finally, in the Social Body Body piece, we can see three large bricks of concrete stacked on top of one another secured together by leather belts and a ball gag. The social Body Body piece is perhaps the most explicit of the three pieces mentioned above in its anthropomorphizing and sexualizing of inanimate objects. While on their own the three bags of concrete might simply represent construction or a job that was never completed with the addition of the leather straps and ball gag, Ibarra creates a piece with much more complex significance. In terms of questions, I would like to ask during the artist presentation, I am curious about the connections between the La Chica Boom series and Drag as a queer art form. In addition to learning more about the La Chica Boom series, I would also like to further investigate Ibarra’s motivations for using the nylon/pantyhose material in so many pieces and performances.