This is an excerpt from a talk by J. Paul Halferty Identification, Embodiment and Being that took place on June 10 2011 at The National Gallery of Canada. Halferty’s talk was the second part of a two part lecture called Beauty, Art and the Female Form. The talk was organized in conjunction with The Magnetic North theatre Festival where my one woman play The Silicone Diaries was playing.
It should be stated that Transformation was created in 2006 by a process I call ‘collaborative self-portraiture’ -creating an image of myself with other artists. Bruce LaBruce took the actual photo. I came in with the idea of photographing my body at the time through his iconography. Creating the specifics of the image was a negotiation between us. He took the photograph and it’s his iconography.
The lecture excerpt (below) was accompanied by a slide image of Transformation. (2006)
“Transformation appeals to the Classical images of Aphrodite/Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. According to Greek mythology, Chronos cut off the genitals of his father, Uranus, and cast them into the sea. Once in the water, sea foam arose around Uranus’ bloody member and testicles, and they were instantly transformed into the goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite/Venus.
Transformation‘s composition, which has Arsenault’s body sitting on the chair in a pool of blood, visually references Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, which depicts Venus on a shell, emerging from the sea. The portrait thus links the Classical images of violence, conflict, castration, and blood, which gave birth to the goddess of love and beauty, to the surgical procedures and traumas that gave birth to Arsenault’s beautiful feminine form.
In Transformation, Arsenault’s penis is also visible, denoting that she was born into a male body. The presence of the penis signals that Arsenault’s feminine form, like the Greek myth, Classical/ Renaissance sculpture and painting, as well as the other forms of femininity that she has emulated, is the creation of a “man” within patriarchy.
Transformation powerfully suggests that Arsenault’s embodiment of feminine ideals cannot be divided from her experience of being born with a male body, nor the trauma she underwent to achieve them. Rather, its tense and bloody beauty ironically posits violence, hatred and pain as inseparable from tenderness, love and pleasure.”
– J. Paul Halferty
(reprinted with permission of the author)
This lecture will accompany the Magnetic North Theatre Festival’s production of my one woman play The Silicone Diaries (Ottawa, June 8-11). The lecture will be given by two art historians on June 10 at the National Gallery of Canada. Info below:
The Female Form, Beauty and Art: a lecture
From Ingres to Cindy Sherman, DaVinci to Dali and in works by artists from across the globe and throughout time, representations and images of women in visual art are loaded with meaning. Often they reflect artists’ and society’s aspirations, prejudices and obsessions. So where then, do we place Nina Arsenault and her pursuit of the ideal female form? Join us for this engaging lecture on beauty, aesthetics and the use of the female form in art from the beginnings of art practice to classic works to ”The Silicone Diaries.”
June 10 | 3:30PM-5Pm | Free | Lecture Hall, National Gallery of Canada
The course is in Brock U’s theatre department, and it is called DART 3P95: Praxis I: Queer Theories: Intersecting Identities in Theory and Performance.
I will be visiting the class in the winter sometime. Not sure exactly when yet.
The play is now being studied at York, Guelph and Brock universities.
This course is taught by J. Paul Halferty.
This is the course description:
“Praxis 1 Queer Theories: Intersecting Identities in Theory and Performance” uses studies in sexuality as a springboard for examining the ways in which our subjectitvies and identities are constituted, how they intersect, and how these intersections have been theorized and enacted in both theory and theatrical 
practice. Working from the belief that theory and practice re-enforce each other, and, in fact cannot be fully disaggregated, it will have students engage critically with various ideas about subjectivity and identity (sex, gender, race, class, nation) as they are expressed in theoretical writings, in performance, and in performance texts, from a queer theoretical perspective.
the highly aesthetisized Faire Fecan Theatre
The event is coordinated by Marlis Schweitzer, the Area Coordinator for Theatre Studies at York.
J. Paul Halferty showed this to me today. So beautiful. I’m getting really into queer video.