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Mark Batty Publisher Presents: Becoming
November 4, 2010
Contact: Taylor K. Long
Telephone: 347.830.6271
New York, NY – October 28th, 2010 – In Becoming, artist Yishay Garbasz dares to explore one of society’s most taboo subjects- the exercise of individual agency in the unmaking and remaking of a body’s gender. In this groundbreaking work and objet d’art, Garbasz courageously documents the changes she underwent from one year before her gender reassignment surgery until one year afterward. With unprecedented honesty, the artist photographed her body every week, chronicling the changes throughout this period. Becoming’s flipbook format renders visible and immediate the element of time in this process.
Becoming distills the more than 900 pictures that Garbasz took of herself during this two-year period down to a selection of 89 photographs. Whether flipped through in a kinetic continuum or at a viewed slowly, photograph by photograph, these images confront viewers both with discrete moments in time and with the overall process of change. As film and cultural critic Vivian Sobchack writes in her accompanying essay, “Flip books and the celluloid cinema they became usually ‘suture’ and gloss over the cuts in time (and between individual frames) upon which their kinetic visual effects depend. These are real cuts made both in time and on the body-most particularly, on this body that now moves before us in its painless transition from then to now and from he to she.”
Along with Sobchack’s essay, which situates Becoming in the contexts of film and gender politics, is a personal essay about the project by Garbasz. She writes: “Becoming is a straightforward look at male-to-female sexual transition. I offer a direct look at the reality of my body during this process, in contrast to idealized male and female bodies and identities. So much of the media we see every day presents airbrushed, idealized stories and focuses on making products seem appealing. I want you to come to your own understanding about gender. My job is simply to put the information in your hands, literally. What you make of it is up to you.”
About Yishay Garbasz:
Yishay Garbasz was born in 1970 and studied photography at Bard College in New York. She is a Berlin-based British-Israeli artist whose work delves deeply into social and political issues of identity, agency, human rights, and the construction of gender. She has exhibited widely in solo shows in galleries, museums, and photography festivals around the world. Becoming was installed as a zoetrope with 28 images in the 2010 Busan Biennale in Korea. Garbasz’s In My Mother’s Footsteps (Hatje Cantz, 2009), a riveting contemporary journey through her mother’s survival of the Holocaust, was nominated for the German photo book prize and exhibited at Wako Works of Art, Ronald Feldman Fine Art, Norderlicht fotofestival, Chiang Mai Museum of Art, and Tokyo Wonder Site.
About Vivian Sobchack:
Vivian Sobchack is Professor Emerita in the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media and former Associate Dean at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and Dean of the Arts at UC-Santa Cruz. Her essays on the cinema and culture have appeared in journals such as Film Quarterly, Film Comment, camera obscura, Art Forum International, Journal of Visual Culture, Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and Body & Society. Her books include An Introduction to Film; The Address Of The Eye: A Phenomenology Of Film Experience; Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film; and, most recently, Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment And Moving Image Culture.
About Mark Batty Publisher
Mark Batty Publisher (http://www.markbattypublisher.com) is an independent publisher dedicated to making distinctive books on the visual art of communicating, showcasing the visual power and innovation of contemporary culture in all of its varied poses. Today, the visual comes at us from more places than ever, and its dissemination is faster and more advanced every year. Books from Mark Batty Publisher capture this acceleration on the pages of every book. Affordable, well designed, thoughtfully created, and produced to last, MBP books are artful products that readers want to hold onto forever.
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Becoming: A Gender Flipbook
By Yishay Garbasz
Page Count: 192 pages
Size: 5 x 7 inches
Format: Paperback flip book w/ filmstrip bellyband
Publication Date: September 1010
Price: $21.95
ISBN: 978-1-9356130-0-8
For a review copy, more information, or to schedule an interview with the author, contact +1 347.830.6271, media@markbattypublisher.com.
