Transgender Art

In a triptych, Ol auf Leinwand, German surrealist Siegfried Zademack ((1952- ) offers viewers a hermaphroditic angel. The left panel shows the tip of the figure's right wing, the right panel the tip of the figure's left wing, and the center panel the angelic figure herself and the rest of the wings. The figure stands in a pool, among lily pads, a row of grasses beyond, the full moon making a halo around her head. The wings, one perceives, in looking closer, are metal; moreover, they are strapped to the figure's chest by a harness. As such, they are technological artifacts, which suggests that, appearances to the contrary (the moon-halo, the mechanical wings, and the triptych itself, which is typically reserved for altar paintings designed as altar pieces), the angelic-looking figure is no angel, which raises the questions, of course, as to just who she is and why she is posing, however absurdly, as a divine messenger. They have been jury rigged, as it were, in a rather clumsy manner, and cords or ropes are draped at intervals across their length.

In another painting, a sort of transgender twist on Rene Magritte's The Importance of Marvels or Megalomania, both of which telescope the sectioned segments of a female figure skyward. In the fashion of Chinese boxes, the thighs and pelvis, the top of which is open, contain the lower belly, which, also open, in turn, contains the upper abdomen and the breasts. In Megalomania, the upper abdomen and breasts ends the figure, but, in The Importance of Marvels, a small female head appears at the summit of the telescoped figure, her arms projecting through the armholes, as it were, which appear in the sides of the uppermost section--the one with the upper abdomen and breasts--of the figure.

Zademark's painting is strikingly similar, although the female figure is comprised of only an upper and a lower half, albeit with a bearded man's head replacing the female's head and his masculine arms replacing her feminine limbs. Other differences include Zademark's inclusion of a breach in the top of the figure's left breast and the appearance of his genitals and thighs between the lower half of the bisected female figure in which he stands (the covered vulva and upper thighs) and the upper half of the form (the upper abdomen, breasts, shoulders, and neck).