Object Lessons: Thinking Gender Variance through Minimalist Sculpture

Abstract

What lessons can we learn from objects? Art objects can tell us many things—about their origins, their intended and received meanings, their makers. But what can objects teach us about how to see? About how to see other objects, or bodies, in realms far removed from the museum, gallery, or studio? If it is possible to learn from objects how to see bodies differently, can they teach us to see gender differently, to shift the ways we perceive nonnormative genders? “Object Lessons,” my title here, refers to a methodology in which we might understand our lived experiences of sculptural works as capable of teaching us conceptual frameworks through which to recognize new or different genders, in one another and in ourselves. I propose a strategy for reading a group of Minimalist sculptural practices against the grain, finding in them renewed possibilities for theorizing nonnormatively gendered embodiments. I see sculpture as occupying a unique place to learn about and transform our experiences of the gendered body, not primarily because of what we see in the sculptures, but because of how they might enable us to see everything else.