There’s always been something remarkable about Ritty Tacsum’s work. Whether it’s photographing a model in a pig head mask, almost Alice in Wonderland-like, or clicking the shutter to crystallise an intimate moment in time between two people, Tacsum’s work pulls and teases at the viewer’s consciousness while often generating the unease associated with something half-experienced or distantly remembered.
While it had been some time since she had last exhibited work locally, I had high hopes for Disrupting Binaries, which is first and foremost of particular and personal significance to Tacsum, forming part of her end-of-year project leading to a BFA in Digital Arts at the University of Malta.
Showing her capability and aptitude for growth as an artist, Disrupting Binaries was a surprising move away from Tacsum’s expected use of the moody, murky memory pieces she has come to master. Instead her work revolved around Judith Butler’s theory of gender performance.
Tacsum’s work pulls and teases at the viewer’s consciousness while often generating unease
Known for her contributions to feminism and gender construction, Butler has long been hailed as the authority on how gender affects ‘the script’ of our behaviour and how this is passed down from generation to generation in the form of socially established values. Butler argues that our performance as individuals is not only dependent on the different stimuli that we receive externally, but that the performance itself is carried out as much for ourselves as it is for others. One cannot have completely masculine or completely feminine traits; man is simply made to adapt.
It was this latter point that Tacsum focused on through the use of three-dimensional images of almost featureless and sexless figures. Designed to react to their audience, the figures shifted according to the viewpoint of the person viewing them, much in the same way as informed communication is understood to shift.
If the viewer moved his head to a particular angle, the figure before him moved accordingly, thus cementing Butler’s theory that performance does not happen in a vacuum but as a reaction.
Tacsum’s intention was indeed a clear one: by marrying the element of performance to the real and the virtual worlds at once, she demonstrated how human beings superimpose and shape everything around them based on their vision of themselves and their own needs.
Of course, what made things even more interesting was the fact that Tacsum did not delegate sexes to her characters, showing the fluidity of her three-dimensional figures as well as the possibilities offered in a lack of definition by gender.
Technology also makes it possible for one to have a certain level of control on what balance of masculinity and femininity to give the figures of their creation, displaying fluidity and alteration. It is interesting to note that while the figures themselves are subject to change, even while they do so, they remain wholly themselves.
Ironically and thought-provokingly, the androgynous characters exist in an environment which can’t be constructed outside a binary system, highlighting the element of tension that Tacsum is renowned for using in her work
Unlike much work seen on the local circuit, Tacsum’s work carries the weight of its mission statement lightly and effortlessly and is able to concretely show and apply her message with great skill.
Despite her move away from her photography comfort zone, she has succeeded in creating a piece of work worthy of the good reputation that she has deservedly earned.
Disrupting Binaries does not only achieve what it sets out to, but also succeed in disrupting our expectations of the artist. This exhibition is possibly Tacsum at her most flexible, while still remaining wholly herself.