Alex Orellana
It started with a selfie.
Alex Orellana, a photographer and Master of Fine Arts student at UW-Madison, began hormone therapy two years ago as treatment for depression. A testosterone blocker proved helpful, so a doctor recommended adding estrogen for even better results. But the treatment came with a side effect: Orellana’s physical appearance would change.
“I wanted to see how that looked,” says Orellana, who is biologically male and identifies as gender-nonconforming. Orellana started taking photos as the treatment progressed, documenting the subtle transformation as face and body became androgynous. “This was a private project — and really not even a project.”
Around the same time Orellana started treatment, the issue of gender identity began popping up with greater frequency in the news and entertainment media. National Geographic published a special issue on the “Gender Revolution.” Stars like Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox gave prominent voices to the transgender community — a demographic long ignored and poorly understood by the general public. But amid the representations being presented, there was nothing that fit Orellana’s own personal gender expression, which rejects the male-female binary altogether.
“There’s an assumption that one day you’ll make the switch [from male to female],” Orellana says. “But I’m not transitioning. I didn’t want there to be a day that I switched.”
Orellana decided to expand a self-portrait series into a gallery exhibition exploring — and debunking — the concept of gender. The project, “Middle Child: Photographs by Alex Orellana,” debuted in late April and is on display at the Chazen Museum through June 25. The project won the 2017 Chazen Museum Prize, which is awarded annually to an outstanding MFA student. Using photography and multimedia technology, Orellana created a collection of images and videos that deconstruct deeply rooted perceptions of how physical characteristics can determine gender.
“My goal is to share with people that there is this in-between space,” Orellana says.
Alex Orellana
Orellana manipulates photographs and videos to upend preconceptions about gender.
For the project Orellana began by taking three self-portraits: “self as man, self as woman and self as self.” All three were taken within 20 minutes of each other, with the artist making small adjustments to wardrobe, hair and makeup to complete each identity. The trio of portraits shows that the characteristics are seen as inherently masculine or feminine are, in fact, completely arbitrary.
“Male and female is biological, but masculinity and femininity are constructed,” says Orellana, who can look either male or female, depending on context. There is privilege in being able to pass for both genders, but there’s also potential for conflicts, particularly in spaces that are regulated based on a gender binary, Orellana adds. “I’ve had men block [the bathroom] door and glare at me. If someone sees me as male, fine, but as a more masculine woman, people treat me worse.”
The artist also photographed family members: father, mother, older brother, younger sister. The images are all in the same style — a minimalistic headshot and no visible clothing. Orellana then used a computer program to create composite images mixing opposite-gendered family members together to create entirely new people who possess male and female characteristics. The images are displayed as a grid, showing the various stages of transformation.
A video showing the images in rapid succession creates a face-morph effect, further demonstrating the blurred boundaries of the masculine-feminine spectrum. It’s mesmerising to watch, but Orellana actually finds the video unsettling. “I thought it would give me clarity, but it made me less sure about the way I appear.”
The entire project has been “intense” for Orellana, who plans to take a break from self-portraiture for a while after the exhibit comes down on June 25. But the exploration and discovery of gender and identity is ongoing.
“I feel my best when I accept that my body is not a conventional male body,” Orellana says. “I can make subtle changes that make me happy rather than putting on a costume that somebody told me to wear.”