FEATHER CHIAVERINI

WRITTEN BY LI MACHADO

Imbued with pizzazz and playfulness, Feather Chiaverini’s repurposed garments come alive with the whirlwind energy of theater costume shops and hurried backstage scrambles to change between acts. Using soft found materials, including neoprene suits, old choir robes, blankets, and other costuming detritus, Chiaverini allows his garments to grow, continually adding extensions, alterations, and new markings. Each item corresponds to an identity played out with humor and idiosyncratic nuances—a rainbow Superman tattoo scrawled in marker on the bicep of a muscle man’s costume and polyfill abs made to look more chiseled with a casual sweep of paint. But Chiaverini’s soft-bodied hard men, skeletal twinks, and jocular jocks are more than just homages to the on-the-fly creativity and backstage theater preparations of costumers and actors. They also speak to a dissatisfaction with (and deconstruction of) what Chiaverini identifies as “homonormativity”: the ways in which gay men are increasingly pushed into stereotypical archetypes and sexual roles such as twinks and butches, daddies, bears, tops and bottoms. These labels and their visualization are hardly new— even Chiaverini’s macho men are partly drawn from Miami’s queer culture and popular depictions of buff gay figures in years past. The implicit expectation that men are to find, and unfailingly align with, a stock identity that represents them is suggestive of a moment in which gayness becomes stratified and sanitized; they are ways of pushing people back into boxes that are fundamentally ill-suited to them.

The artist envisions his practice as thinking about identity inside and outside the box, quite literally. Suits taken off the costuming rack, so to speak, are meant to be worn by any person, regardless of gender identity, gender presentation, or physical build. Any body can grow or shrink to fill the role. In this sense, they are antidotes to the less detailed costumes aping the kinds one might find at Spirit Halloween or Party City stores. These appear as a simplified version of the aforementioned skele-twink, fashioned from a simple morphsuit and felt cutouts, or a gay caveman with Flintstones-esque animal print tunic. The overtly cheap, cartoonish look of these costumes, neatly folded in plastic packages that become increasingly dingier and more tattered as viewers flip through them, evokes a dystopian halloween shop where rainbow-washing becomes the norm and gayness becomes distilled into a series of textureless pastiches. Chiaverini draws a hard line between them and the lively, lived-in products of his would-be backstage shop, all of them tailor-made

(detail, above)

Mixed media installation.

Dimensions variable.

Photo credit: Neighboring States.

(detail, left)

Mixed media installation.

Dimensions variable.

Photo credit: Neighboring States.

CHIAVERINI’S SOFT-BODIED HARD MEN, SKELETAL TWINKS, AND JOCULAR JOCKS ARE MORE THAN JUST HOMAGES TO THE ON-THE-FLY CREATIVITY AND BACKSTAGE THEATER PREPARATIONS OF COSTUMERS AND ACTORS.

THROUGH THE LOOKING ASS

(detail, above)

Mixed media installation.

Dimensions variable.

Photo credit: Neighboring States.

THROUGH THE LOOKING ASS

(detail, opposite page)

Mixed media installation.

Dimensions variable.

Photo credit: Neighboring States.