CRIS CERDEIRA

In my home country, Chile, the culture is very conservative and heteronormative--especially
around gender roles. Growing up as a gay man in Chile, I was told repeatedly what it meant
to be a man and was criticized for engaging in anything considered feminine. When I moved
to Berlin, I found the attitudes towards gender liberating and it opened me up to the many
possibilities of gender expression.

In this photo series, I photographed three non-binary models portraying masculine tropes
commonly found in visual arts. The models are positioned in poses typically viewed as
“masculine” and associated with male models in fashion and art. Surrounding them are halos
of plastic flowers and found plastic objects wrapping around them like armour, almost oozing
out of their bodies. The images are meant to evoke a sense of evolution of “masculine” with
feminine flowers and objects trying to blossom out of the model like armour, but the toxicity
of masculinity is still present in the plasticity of the objects.

I chose LGBTQI non-binary models because anyone can be masculine. Heterosexual
cys-gendered males do not own masculinity. Non-binary and genderqueer expressions
breakdown the distinctions between masculine and feminine by redefining the terms
altogether.