Abstract
“Hybridity started life as a biological term, used to describe the outcome of a crossing of two plants or species” but it is now “a term for a wide range of social and cultural phenomena involving ‘mixing’ and has become a key concept within cultural criticism and postcolonial theory” (Brah, 2000:2). The term hybrid vigor (sic), in its biological and genetic context, refers specifically to the offspring of plant and animal varieties which are “both larger and stronger than either parent” (Ruch, 1984:96) because of deliberate hybridisation. Most dictionary definitions of hybrid vigour include the scientific term heterosis, which is described as the prevailing disposition of cross-bred offspring to exhibit lasting qualities, superior to both progenitors. The conceptual implications of this statement present a theoretical starting point for this research. I am an artist who works extensively within contextual ambiguities, palimpsests of process and hybridised materials. I consider my own identity as multi-hybrid, in as much as I have been dynamically influenced by the hybrid societies in which I have lived.1 While discourse on hybrid expressions of identity abound, my interest and the core of this research, focuses specifically on how and why one constructs and performs queer gender in the social polis. In doing this, I postulate that certain constituent elements comprising stratifications of identity become “generative” (Ahmed 2006:87) and in certain instances find expression in the process of art-making. These contextual couplings and hybridisations of signification, born from this process of techno-poiesis2 , are what I refer to as hybrid vigour...
M.Tech. (Fine Arts)