No Dads No Masters

No Dads No Masters serves as an interrogation of white, working-class, Midwestern, hetero-masculinities as a material subject, and subsequently, as an interrogation of myself. The work makes for a repositioning of contemporary gender theories to be explored via these specific material masculinities in ways that they are often overlooked in the field of gender studies. The visual articulations of my project, the chimera of painting and sculpture, will act as agents of mutation against traditionally gendered attitudes, spaces, and objects. This interrogation/mutation is grounded within the liminal site of the garage, framing it as a Foucaultian heterotopia to highlight the intricate and often contradicting process of White, American, working class manhood--its praxis failure, and prototyping. The simultaneous operation of indulgence and criticism of masculinity complicates a narrative of hegemonic masculinity in favor of an infinitely richer and more difficult approach to identity.