UTOPIA IS THE SHAPESHIFTING BODY: ARTISTIC EXPRESSION AND POLITICAL PRACTICE AT A QUEER LIFE DRAWING GROUP

Abstract

Studies of queer politics usually focus on activist movements and formal politics. This essay seeks to offer an alternative approach to queer politics by investigating the type of politics practiced within queer-exclusive spaces that are less visible to the broader public. It focuses on a life drawing group for LGBTQ+ artists in Singapore known as Queer Life Drawing (QLD). The concept of “everyday utopia” is employed to describe a form of politics based on actualization and imagination that takes place at small-scale, aspirational social sites. In contrast to identity-based politics oriented towards creating changes within institutions of the state, a more radical queer politics is practiced at QLD that aims for queer individuals to transcend the limitations of normative categories. I employ participant observation by attending sessions to draw at the group, along with doing 7 semi-structured interviews with artists, models and organisers from the group. I conclude that through artistic practices of drawing and modelling, as well as interpersonal processes, participants of QLD endeavour to subvert oppressive power relations of the capitalist art world as well as regulations of the queer body by heteronormative society. Relations of recognition and solidarity are developed through co-creation of meaning between artists and models through the practice of life drawing.