Ebenezer Galluzzo's Blue Sky Instagram Takeover... Interrupted
We invited Ebenezer Galluzzo to takeover the Blue Sky Instagram account this week to share about his experience at our Blue Sky+Sitka Center for Arts and Ecology Residency earlier this year. The platform censored some of his posts, so please find the original images and text here:
Wednesday, August 20, 2020:
I’m going to veer a little bit from the themes of landscape as mirror for the next few days, and bring up a topic that shows up in relation to some of my self-portraiture: humor. I use humor as a way to challenge rigid, binary gender norms, a way to poke fun at the arbitrary and absurd notion that a color, object, or article of clothing is specific to one gender. I love me a good double entendre and flipping the script on how to view the gendered symbology of popular culture. I am also constantly mining my own understanding of why I am finding something humorous. The culture at large taught me that to have masculinity and femininity existing in the same form is comical or a punchline. In my images and my life when I have felt proud and glorious, or even comfortable in my presentation I have been laughed at and made fun of. It is a fine line I walk when creating, to use humor as a way to make fun of an oppressive system, while also honoring my expression.
When this idea came to me to create a pussy willow phallus, I cracked myself up for a good 5 minutes, AND I felt sexy as hell when creating it. The gold leaf intersecting halos l add after the image is printed as a way to honor and celebrate my expression of desire.
PS This image, “Thick”, is a part of @Five Oak Museum’s Gender Euphoria Show, curated by jsut_becca. It is a stunning show filled with talented artists of various mediums, head over to their page and check it out!!
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Thursday, August 21, 2020
I want to expand on my last post about humor. In my previous post I shared how I see it as a means to challenge oppressive systems around gender norms. I also find it a vital tool for my own comfort when I am giving talks or lectures discussing my self portraiture. When people confront something they don’t know or feel uncomfortable with laughing is a way to release some of their discomfort. I will often make a joke as a method to ease tension, and also to protect myself. Sometimes I confuse other’s comfort for my own, however. I believe if I am funny, people will be less likely to be cruel. Really what I want to say is, see me, hear me, protect me. There are times when my humor is a useful tool, and there are moments when I want to push past it, so that a space for sacred witnessing can exist. to ask the environment, the viewer, and those assisting me to give space to what I truly need.
This photo was created during the end of my residency and embodied that shift from tongue in cheek humor to support and safety. This was something I was pushing myself to do more and more during my time out there: to be seen by the landscape, allowing the shield of humor to lower. This image feels the most honest representation of me, and is also the most vulnerable. I’m thankful to the Neskowin river, my grandmothers lace tablecloth, and Nicola Harris for supporting me and holding me in various ways during this
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Follow @blueskygallerypdx for more posts from Ebenezer’s takeover
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