Mary Coble puts her body on the line. In the young performance artist's piece Note to Self, she collected over 100 names of murdered GLBT victims of hate crimes. On September 2 at Conner Contemporary Art in Washington, DC, these names were inscribed on her body with a tattoo needle without ink. The names appeared on her skin outlined in her own blood. Two months later, at Artists Space in New York, she performed Binding Ritual: Daily Routine, in which she covered her breast with duct tape, then ripped the tape off, over and over for an hour. Currently on display at the American University museum, in an exhibit organized by Provisions, Mary Coble's photographs Blurring Boundaries depict scenes from these performances as well as other images that challenge conventional notions of gender.
Your work requires quite a bit of endurance, not only on your part but also on the part of the audience. But the endurance highlighted in your photo series "Blurring Boundaries" as well as in your performance piece "Binding Ritual, Daily Routine" seems to be connected to transformation rather than commemoration (as in "Notes to Self"). Did you want to celebrate this transformative endurance or simply engage the viewer in an empathetic exercise?
MC: The piece "Binding Ritual, Daily Routine" is about a transformation that can be seen in relation to any person who has to change their appearance everyday, for a lifetime, in order to feel okay enough to present themselves to society. It can also be seen as a direct reference to a female-to-male transgender person who may bind his breast daily.
This process was an endurance piece for myself, as the artist. I had to undergo this ritual in order to engage the viewers in the thought of what it could be like to do this for a lifetime. It was also an endurance piece for the viewers as well. They chose to sit and watch this piece. In doing this they were directly confronted with my stare. With each application and rip of the tape I held eye contact with someone from the audience. By doing this I was forcing them to not only notice the effect of the performance on my breast but to think about fact that this act was referencing a person's real daily struggle. Instead of looking at it like an "empathetic exercise" I like to think that I was giving the audience a chance to question and to consider issues they may not have been experiencing before this performance.
There is something magical about crossing the boundaries of gender, like in Greek myths or in Shakespeare plays. But you seem to want to demystify the process for viewers, to remind them of the pain of breast-binding, for instance. With the "Blurring Boundaries" series, you are also kind of pulling back the curtain, as if to say, this is really what it's like to be transgender. While you were thinking about this art and doing it, did you feel as though you were piercing through the mythmaking once and for all, pulling back only a few of the veils, or inevitably establishing new layers of mystification in the process?
MC: My point in doing this piece was to raise questions for my viewers. I'm simply presenting them with images and hoping the ideas of what it means to be female and male are considered. I hope that the work is doing a little bit of both pulling back the veils and establishing new layers of thought.
There is something very interesting and exciting about crossing the established gender boundaries. I would not consider it "magical", I think about it as being something that is very natural. What is more mystifying to me is the idea that everyone in the world fits into the very strict boxes of female and male – there are just too many variations of people and the boxes are just too small.
Your work calls into question the rules of gender in very interesting ways. But do you think that the transgender experience also reinforces rules of gender? In other words, newly acquired sexual organs or accommodation to cultural preferences (e.g., no face hair for women) become even more important as symbols of successful transformation. What was fluid and changeable becomes fixed. Or does it?
MC: It's hard to consider the "transgender experience" as any one thing – people individually experience things differently. However the fluidity that I like to experience in gender is generally not how the world looks at gender. In order to feel recognized and comfortable some people want to choose these "cultural preferences". I'm respectful and can see both sides: wanting to transverse the lines of gender and wanting to have the fixed symbols of female and male.
With the movie Transamerica, transgender seems to be the hot new topic for Hollywood. But there have also been a number of recent documentaries --Transcendence, Screaming Queens -- that provide more rounded pictures of transgender folks. Why do you think transgender issues have become more prominent in popular culture? Is it voyeurism on the part of the mainstream or struggle for acceptance on the part of transgender people themselves? Do Americans want "feel-good" movies about transgender to balance the painful experience of Boys Don't Cry?
MC: I haven't seen any of the movies mentioned except for Boys Don't Cry. From just hearing about some of the others I think one of the goals of all of these are to inform society about something that is not so mainstream. These movies are recognizing the existence, struggles, and triumphs of a community of people who have been invisible.
I feel like transgender issues are being talked more because it is an issue that can be spoken about out loud now. There is more support for people to stand up. It's something that was once very taboo and still is, but is being more accepted by a greater number of people. I don't sense that it is an issue of voyeurism – maybe there is bit of curiosity that I think needs to be addressed. People are scared of what they are not familiar with, so in that aspect it is important to talk about these issues and demystify this" thing" that people may have heard of but never really talked about.
