“Goldendean gleams and glamours us, inciting a frenzy of gold lust, gold fever and golden showers. Much like gold itself, the spectacle of Goldendean challenges the arbitrary values we place in the normative body. Our gaze cannot help but devour Goldendean. They are simultaneously seductive and silly, rejecting the gold standard and revealing the embedded heteronormative positioning of queerness as unnatural and undesired. By transitioning into a golden figure, hewn from minerals pillaged from the soil, they personify the binaries of taste and value”
Goldendean is an evolving public performance exploring the fascination with the flesh, in particular the flesh of non-normative queer bodies, and how they inhabit and take space, challenging the arbitrary values we place on normalisation and assimilation. They embody an avatar – a hybrid or the manifestation of a deity or a teacher come to earth – presenting a variety of painted, unclothed and clothed forms to interrogate how we perform both gender and whiteness in public. While the audience often seems obsessed with where they can place Goldendean within a binary of male or female, this occurs whether or not they are naked.
BREATHE.GOLDENDEAN from MUTI LIFE on Vimeo.
Painted gold, exquisitely queer, unashamedly naked in public, Goldendean invites you to catch breath, bubbles and feelings.
