Centre of Somewhere: South Africa Focus
GOLDENDEAN
(South Africa)
SOFT VXNXS
FRI 13 - SAT 14 OCTOBER 2023 09:00 - 18:00
FRI 27 - SAT 28 OCTOBER 2023 09:00 - 16:00
No ticket required
Princes Square Shopping Centre (Directions)
ACCESS: AD (Festival Access Page).
A pre-recorded audio description by the artist is available on MP3 players at the sculptures, which are also able to be touched. You can also listen to the audio description embedded here from Soundcloud, or download the file to your own device via this link.
Goldendean invites you to a tender moment with a “soft radical” – to catch breath, bubbles and feelings. To be tender, to take space, be vulnerable and risk visibility – in performance, and as large scale inflatable sculptures. As a “Fat Queer White Trans body” in the context of South Africa, artist Dean Hutton questions who or what is entitled to take up space. In doing so, they address the personal and political of hypervisibility: being visible (as a fat, queer, white, trans body) and invisible, unimportant at the same time (as a fat, queer, white, trans body).
Soft Vxnxs is a large-scale, inflatable sculpture installation, presented in Princes Square shopping centre. Visitors are invited to touch or embrace the work. They are round, soft, flexible, and inviting. Society expects fat and messy bodies to turn up traumatized and out of breath and never cheerful, horny, or beaming with political speech. In response, Soft Vxnxs creates comfort and space for vulnerability.
Check out Goldendean’s other works in the Festival:
The Big Fat Light Merqueer will be presented during the Festival.
Experience their live performance work Breathe at Tramway on Saturday 21st October.
Dean Hutton is a genderqueer trans media artist provoking dialogue about the gaze, queer bodies, love and social justice. Their strategy of simple and often improvised, disruptive actions by a “Fat Queer White Trans body” share moments of soft courage to affirm the right of all bodies to exist, to be celebrated and protected. Their extensive studio practice, as a photographer and a visual artist producing works on paper, digital video and sculptural objects, bridge intersecting genres of documentary, fiction and fantasy to produce radical queer counter narratives. Gender neutral pronouns: They/ Them
Presentation Credits: Dean Hutton/ Goldendean.
Production credits: Soft Vxnxs was originally commissioned by HETHEM for Chapter 4OUR: Abundance curated by Simon(e), van Saarloos. 2021.
Photos: Main banner/Image 1 - Zeitz MOCAA Image 2 by Anthea Pokroy. Image 3 by Cassander Eeftink
Goldendean is presented as part of the Centre of Somewhere South Africa focus, funded by the British Council International Collaboration programme.