Ileana Tejada
My body contradicts pop aesthetics of beauty. It is difficult for
women such as myself, who oppose gender conformity, to exist.
This is especially true when one’s own body refuses to conform—
when the physicality of the body itself contradicts existing gender
and sexual conventions.
Performing through different personas in my work, I examine
hybrid bodies. Rather than male vs. female, child vs. adult, and
straight vs. queer, I am a man, a woman, and a child all at the
same time. I lift white men up, literally and in opposition to the
rules that have been set before me. As a woman of color, this
presents a particularly powerful opportunity. I offer my strengths,
my vulnerabilities.