Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Art

Reader 1

Aly Ogasian

Reader 2

Ken Gonzales-Day

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Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

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© 2025 Elinor K Attisani

Abstract

Making Faces is a series of gelatin silver prints and moving images that argues that identity is constructed through– rather than simply reflected in– repeated choices and behaviors. Through my project, I suggest that gender is not innate, but rather, performed. The images visualize the process through which a gendered self is established. A series of representations of Mari in costume come together to demonstrate the practicing of gender, and point to the illusory nature of the notion of a pre-existing, essential self. This representation of an exaggeratedly feminine subject is highly staged and theatrical, compelling the viewer to look critically at the prescribed standards of expression that we have been taught to see as natural.

I have created this work in collaboration with a dear friend. Mari uses makeup and clothing to put on new personas, and their ever-surprising insights about identity and perception are what inspired me to explore this subject in the first place. The work is both critical and joyful, as the understanding that all behavior is performative provides a sense of liberation from the struggle for authenticity within a heterocentric society. If we can view all of the many expressions of gender as masquerade, we no longer have to concern ourselves with proving that our ways of being are natural enough or “right”, or with justifying our transgressions. My work offers an invitation to this alternate understanding of the real world through theatrics and fiction. What better way to see reality than to fictionalize it– to illustrate my understanding of gender through symbolism and storytelling in hopes of illuminating the strangeness of what we’ve learned to take for granted.

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