Mapping Gender: multisensory exhibition, exploring gender, comes to Worthing

  • Meridian

ITV Meridian's Report is by: Charlotte Wilkins

This intimate, multilayered piece delves into the correlation between borders and boundaries on maps and those related to the body and gender.

"I'm talking a lot about my own personal experience, but also looking at Trans history and exploring history through that lens; finding a sense of belonging. "

Maps carve borders through landscapes. Clothes are maps for the body. Both are arbitrary constructs, omnipresent in our society, and have a real impact on people.

Mapping Gender is a multisensory exhibition of dance, image, scent, sound and research. It's an invitation to explore the parallels between cartography and historical clothing through a lens of non-binary experiences.

The work was created by Artist, Anders Duckworth in collaboration with Sound Artist, Kat Austen. It also includes the voices of 12 other non-binary people.

“At the heart of the piece was this collaboration with Kat Austen and that was a really beautiful collaboration. Kat’s work uses found samples. So we took samples from contested borders and also personal borders in landscape. “

“We took soil samples and water samples and that’s what Kat uses to create sound. As well as the composition, the Landscape has its own voice which I think is really exciting, too”

The work is also inspired by an 18th Century Mantua dress, like this one which is held at Worthing Museum.

The piece is not a conventional performance - enabling the audience to experience the work through all of their senses.

Anders says:

'We have a scent that changes through the piece. I'm always thinking about transience. And how things are constantly in motion, in change,  in flux, the human body is growing older and changing, and gender is one of those things that I talk about. '

The very personal and thought-provoking work looks at how we divide people into male and female and the possibilities beyond that.

Mapping Gender will be held at the Museum and Gallery on Saturday 18th February 2023 at 7:30pm.