The Queer Body and the Obstructed Gaze: Chicanx Performance Artists and the Power of Self-Objectification

The Queer Body and the Obstructed Gaze: Chicanx Performance Artists and the Power of Self-Objectification This article examines the ways in which four queer Chicanx performance artists have manipulated and obstructed the spectator’s gaze as a method for activating their abjection, performing self-objectification or fetishization, or asserting agency. As seminal Chicanx and queer performance artists, Luis Alfaro and Nao Bustamante set the stage for identity exploration through the corporeal and figurative display of excess: they invite in the spectator’s gaze to look at the queer brown body and challenge them to resist a reductive framing of their othered voluptuousness. In their pieces Seed/Unseed (2015) and “Turn Around Sidepiece” (2018), respectively, Vick Quezada and Xandra Ibarra experiment with the obstructed gaze as a means to undermine the subjugation of the indigenous-border-queer subject.