Statement from the artist on the piece: Queer, feminine, chicanx, womxn, are all categories that are supposed to be my identity but are unstable and their meanings change as I move across time and space. I use make-up to explore identity in its ephemerality and precarious nature. While make-up for me, is a self-care ritual and heavily tied to being โfeminine,โ I explore what identity is as I navigate my subjective world whether it be my place in academia, the public sphere, or intimate relationships.
What does genre mean to you and how does it build/unbuild your work?
Genre, like identity might just be a way to categorize. When I finally realized that I was queer, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what type of queer I was. Eventually, I realized that I am an unknowable being, even to myself. Labeling only helps so much, and only sometimes.
Something similar happened when I finally admitted to myself that art is the medium through which I want to make some worlds better. For a while there, I tried to define myself as a writer, later an art historian, but I slowly accepted my role as artist while accepting all other forms of knowledge making. For me, genre is just the places to begin searching.
Lizbeth Miscles-Rivera is a queer femme Chicanx womxn who has become concerned with institutional erasure of femme resistance. In hopes of having that resistance remembered she studies Art History at the University of New Mexico. As a first generation student, she is a Mellon Mays Fellow and first place winner of the Hulsman Undergraduate Research Award (2019). She attended the Special International Academic Residency Program in Puebla, Mexico in 2018. Her academic and art practices investigate the complexities of identity forming within a colonial, imperial, and capitalistic context.
