Narcissister’s performances in masks and merkins question the fluctuating status of objecthood and subjectivity in popular renderings of the black female body. Embracing a DIY aesthetic, Narcissister scavenges material and image. Her citation of dance functions as the active disavowal of virtuosity, shifting attention from climax to aspiration, delineating an aesthetic of dramaturgical disavowal that performs an alternate imaginary for the racialized, gendered American body.

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© 2015 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2015

Supplementary data

Every Woman (2010)

Excerpt from Narcissister’s Every Woman (2010).

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