Blake Little: FLUID   

OCT 2 - DEC 19

Kenderdine Art Gallery

Curated by Wayne Baerwaldt

FLUID is a photographic portrait series by Los Angeles-based Blake Little that began in 2017 with a simple casting call. The response was overwhelming and led to portrait sessions in various locations including university studios in Victoria, Regina and Saskatoon. What Little has come to recognize is the pivotal and seismic shift in the history of the human identity spectrum with transgender, non-binary, gender fluid, Two Spirit and + people at the forefront. As an artist Blake felt compelled to begin recording regular, activist and celebrity models who are on the vanguard, while paying particular attention to the diversity of class, race, age groups and geographic locations of his models. 

A touring exhibition of 31 colour portraits has evolved in close consultation with Dr. Aaron Devor, Founder and Academic Director of the world’s largest Transgender Archives, and Founder and host of the international, interdisciplinary Moving Trans History Forward conferences and Professor of Sociology, University of Victoria. The first iteration of the exhibition was presented in January, 2020, at the University of Victoria Legacy Art Galleries. FLUID begins to address pertinent issues and concerns to a range of public interest groups, including questions such as: Is gender over? What are the new semiotics of gender representation? Is post-gender the new international civil rights movement? What are the protocols and issues to be addressed in the making of photographic representation of trans, gender fluid, non-binary and Two Spirit + models? Answers to these and other questions will undoubtedly challenge expectations.

Artist Statement / Blake Little
"It seems to me we’re in a post-Pride era of diversity and gender neutral inclusion in public and private life, with related issues being discussed in university forums as well as public school classrooms and corporate board rooms. As a photographer and an avid viewer there is a conscious aim to have my own understanding of gender representation (initially informed by the culture wars of the 1980s) refreshed and perhaps corrected. I am so thankful to my models that came to the University of Regina, University of Saskatchewan and University of Victoria to be photographed, and simply for allowing me to work with them. In many ways I, like others, are being encouraged to listen in and learn about gender diversity through photographs and moving images. My procedure then is, first and foremost, to observe and interpret with sensitivity and to accept any mistakes in the process. The portraits and the social process behind their production will continue to generate public discussion around why we find these images so powerful, alluring and, on occasion, so difficult to process. Each portrait subject invites new forms of characterization by us as observant interpreters."

IMAGE ABOVE: Blake Little, Mo (image cropped detail), 2019, Photograph. Courtesy the artist.