Wynne Neilly. January 24th 2014-24th Shot, 2014; Fuji Instax Film; 4 ¼ x 3 ¼ in. Courtesy of the Artist and Ryerson Image Centre. Photo: Wynne Neilly.

Through a collection of archival documents, personal photos, and voice recordings in the exhibition Female to “Male” at the Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto-based artist Wynne Neilly presents a self-portrait of his personal journey transitioning from two relative subject positions, “female” and “male.” Quotations around the word “male” in the title ruminate on the mutability of the term, its constructed nature, and the spectrum on which all gender lies. Queer theorist Judith Butler would contend that “male” is an approximation of a gender identity that, as established, can never be fully realized.[1] While gender is indeed provisional, the physical, emotional, and economic impacts of transitioning are not.

Weekly Instant Photographs, 1–45 (2013–2014) depict Neilly injecting himself with 50–100mg of testosterone, and document his physical transformation over a period of months. Displayed in a horizontal line, the photographs feature an expressionless Neilly standing in front of the same gray-white backdrop in his apartment. During the exhibition’s opening, swarms of viewers hovered over these snapshots, voyeuristically attempting to observe traces of the hormone’s effects. Though concerns of spectacle and personal preservation may be misplaced in an exhibition replete with such intimate ephemera, it is indeed difficult not to be moved by the installation’s revealingly diaristic inflections.

Also in the exhibition are two companion pieces, Vocal Changes, August 16, 2013–July 5, 2014 (2013–2014) and Facial Hair (2014): an audio recording of Neilly’s vocal changes paired with a cropped headshot displaying a subtle emergence of facial hair, and Transition Documents and Artifacts (2012–2014), a collection of works on paper chronicling the logistical and emotional outcomes of transitioning. Ranging in tone, these outcomes include a bank statement revealing the cost associated with the procedure ($5,200), receipts from the pharmacy, and a note from Neilly’s mom: “…if you have any qualms about this…” The word “any” is underlined three times. Simultaneously intimate and clinical, these installations invite the audience to piece together a narrative of a relatively unfamiliar procedure, while also revealing the minutia that often go unnoticed.

Neilly’s exhibition comes at a moment when transgender rights are a central conversation in both politics and art. While transgender people continue to be targets of discrimination in the workplace in many states and are unable to serve in the military, Neilly’s collection of work attempts to offer clarity where ignorance predominates. The transgender experience has long been a part of academic conversations, spearheaded in part by Butler’s theory of gender performativity, and Female to “Male” contributes to this conversation byillustrating the irresolvable tension that remains between the academization of gender and the lived experience of gender on an unfixed spectrum. But at the same time, Female to “Male” alsorisks appearing as a neat collection of archival objects that visually simplify an extremely complicated and individual experience.

[1] Judith Butler. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, et al. (New York: Routledge, 1993), 307–320.

Shauna Jean Doherty is a freelance art critic and curator based in Toronto. Her academic research investigates glitch aesthetics and new-media art-preservation practices.

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Hannah Epstein. Cock Fight, 2010; VHS game. Courtesy of the Artist and InterAccess. Photo: Robin Hamill Photography 2014.

The exhibition Mean Time to Upgrade at Toronto’s premiere new-media art gallery, InterAccess, responds to the evolving climate of museum collections and exhibition approaches in the wake of new-media art. In a collection of highly technical artworks spanning a period of 30 years, each is uniquely at risk of becoming obsolete due to its reliance on antiquated components. Save for one of the works in the show, each was selected from a call for works in “existential crisis”—that is, works that are on the verge of losing their function by virtue of their technical composition. By delaying upgrade momentarily, this exhibition gives room to consider the impact of changing the technologies that are fundamental to these artworks. 

Three 1950s beauty-salon chairs complete with hovering helmets populate a substantial space in the gallery. Modified with analog switches and small color monitors where blow-dryers were once housed, Nancy Paterson’s Hair Salon TV (1986) produces a stream of video images with portraits of technological icons juxtaposed with footage of women in various domains (domestic space, workplace environments, and engagement in scientific discovery). The analog technology used effectively collapses images of the domestic, aesthetic, and technical realms to firmly place women in each arena, while also making visible their intersections.

Hannah Epstein’s VHS roulette game, Cock Fight (2010), invites viewers, two at a time, to choose and insert a VHS tape into the player. Users then randomly press the play and pause buttons as points flash on screen (+5, -10). The player is awarded the points that appear onscreen when the video is paused. Cock Fight harkens back to a brief cultural moment in which VHS games were popular. The piece subverts the technical function of the play/pause buttons, and opens up new ways of using and thinking through technologies.

Dragan Espenchied’s 1000years (2012) stands as the most contemporary work in the exhibition, and yet it faces a crisis of expiration like the others. The work is a computer-based performance piece, using a Mac OS X Lion iCalendar program that flips forward and backward 1,000 years. As the animated pages turn rapidly, they indicate the passage of time—a central theme in this exhibition. Mean Time to Upgrade acknowledges the crisis of preservation that currently plagues the field of new-media art but offers little in the way of resolution. The notion of time is so essential in this exhibition because of the rapid rate at which technologies advance and, subsequently, obsolesce. Electronic and digital art demand the development of new institutional modes of thinking in terms of both curating and preservation in order to ensure that technical art, which is so prolific in contemporary art production, is reflected in arts institutions and collections worldwide.

Mean Time to Upgrade is on view at InterAccess in Toronto through November 22, 2014.

Shauna Jean Doherty is a freelance art critic and curator based in Toronto. Her academic research investigates glitch aesthetics and new-media art-preservation practices.

Wynne Neilly. January 24th 2014-24th Shot, 2014; Fuji Instax Film; 4 ¼ x 3 ¼ in. Courtesy of the Artist and Ryerson Image Centre. Photo: Wynne Neilly.

Through a collection of archival documents, personal photos, and voice recordings in the exhibition Female to “Male” at the Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto-based artist Wynne Neilly presents a self-portrait of his personal journey transitioning from two relative subject positions, “female” and “male.” Quotations around the word “male” in the title ruminate on the mutability of the term, its constructed nature, and the spectrum on which all gender lies. Queer theorist Judith Butler would contend that “male” is an approximation of a gender identity that, as established, can never be fully realized.[1] While gender is indeed provisional, the physical, emotional, and economic impacts of transitioning are not.

Weekly Instant Photographs, 1–45 (2013–2014) depict Neilly injecting himself with 50–100mg of testosterone, and document his physical transformation over a period of months. Displayed in a horizontal line, the photographs feature an expressionless Neilly standing in front of the same gray-white backdrop in his apartment. During the exhibition’s opening, swarms of viewers hovered over these snapshots, voyeuristically attempting to observe traces of the hormone’s effects. Though concerns of spectacle and personal preservation may be misplaced in an exhibition replete with such intimate ephemera, it is indeed difficult not to be moved by the installation’s revealingly diaristic inflections.

Also in the exhibition are two companion pieces, Vocal Changes, August 16, 2013–July 5, 2014 (2013–2014) and Facial Hair (2014): an audio recording of Neilly’s vocal changes paired with a cropped headshot displaying a subtle emergence of facial hair, and Transition Documents and Artifacts (2012–2014), a collection of works on paper chronicling the logistical and emotional outcomes of transitioning. Ranging in tone, these outcomes include a bank statement revealing the cost associated with the procedure ($5,200), receipts from the pharmacy, and a note from Neilly’s mom: “…if you have any qualms about this…” The word “any” is underlined three times. Simultaneously intimate and clinical, these installations invite the audience to piece together a narrative of a relatively unfamiliar procedure, while also revealing the minutia that often go unnoticed.

Neilly’s exhibition comes at a moment when transgender rights are a central conversation in both politics and art. While transgender people continue to be targets of discrimination in the workplace in many states and are unable to serve in the military, Neilly’s collection of work attempts to offer clarity where ignorance predominates. The transgender experience has long been a part of academic conversations, spearheaded in part by Butler’s theory of gender performativity, and Female to “Male” contributes to this conversation byillustrating the irresolvable tension that remains between the academization of gender and the lived experience of gender on an unfixed spectrum. But at the same time, Female to “Male” alsorisks appearing as a neat collection of archival objects that visually simplify an extremely complicated and individual experience.

[1] Judith Butler. “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, et al. (New York: Routledge, 1993), 307–320.

Shauna Jean Doherty is a freelance art critic and curator based in Toronto. Her academic research investigates glitch aesthetics and new-media art-preservation practices.