"Accept it, I am this malleable clay. You can shape me as you wish into innumerable forms: everything will resemble me, but nothing so much as the unformed mass, even the substance of my body is malleable."

Cahun, March 1921 (quoted in Shaw 274)

In androgynous dress, Cahun uses a book titled "L'image de la Femme" as a table upon which they read an unidentified book. The lack of information pertaining to the book on top implies that anything is better than the conformity required to absorb the information provided by "L'image de la Femme", and gives the top book a symbolic/universal character referencing academia and traditionally masculine culture. Cahun expresses indifference to, and comfortable defiance of, expectations for people assigned female at birth, preferring to explore other avenues as they read the unidentified book.

1915

1927

1927

I have been obsessed with Claude Cahun ever since I learned about this artist in first year. This semester I am focused on the above quote, which literally and metaphorically correlates with my work. I use am using plasticine for an animation about the body, identity, and human relationships. I have been thinking about identity and how it is shaped by specific interactions and perspectives, and is not as individually controlled as we tend to believe. In this quote, Cahun references the way the feminine and queer body is often received with preconceived and generalizing ideas. Here, they acknowledge that any interpretation of Cahun (or anyone) is accurate enough in the sense that any belief in an individual mind is subjectively true, and even one's interpretation of their own self is equally subjective. A formulated and concrete understanding of a person might be accurate, but is always an approximation based on specific and minimal information. "Nothing so much as the unformed mass" eloquently describes our inability to process ourselves. Most of the mind is not conscious as any given moment, and the constant transferal of energy between ego states, as well as environmental factors, deny the possibility of having a concrete persona. The substance of the body being malleable quite literally connects to my current research as I animate clay bodies morphing into various forms, as well as my current interest in cannibalism, aging, death, and decomposition.