In dialogue with the exhibition Body: Ideal, Gaze and Freedom, artist MC Coble will turn toward bodies – both human and non-human - that refuse to behave.
The performative lecture will discuss the idea of queer embodiments as something that disrupt binary systems and classifications and lets us imagine other ways of being. Rather than focusing on how bodies should be represented, Coble will explore how we can rethink the body itself to become a site of rebellion. In recognition of Trans Awareness month, Coble will pay particular attention to works by trans* artists while also presenting a selection of their own works as well as actions and performances by activists using humor, camp and ‘theatrical frivolity’.
As their current work centers around notions of queer ecologies, Coble will also engage with found matter and elements from nature in order to seek out unexpected connections with non-human bodies. A key trope in the presentation is the asterisk (*). Added to concepts like trans* for instance, the many-pointed sign breaks open otherwise fixed categories. The asterisk, with its spidery fingers, looks like a starfish pointing and touching, its tentacles reminding us that the world is non-binary and relational.
The talk will be held in English, in the exhibition Body: Ideal, Gaze and Freedom.
Bio:
MC Coble (they/them) is a non-binary trans* visual artist, activist and educator often seeking to make visible hidden or ignored histories & the contemporary urgencies of precarious communities and ecologies. Performance, photography, video and drawing form a material foundation for their intersectional approach to queer & trans* feminist politics; using the power of play & the potential of failure as methods.
Most recently Coble has exhibited at the Sune Jonsson Center for Documentary Photography, Västerbotten Museum and HEIRLOOM-center for art and archives in Copenhagen (2025). Together with their partner, art historian Louise Wolthers, they published the artist book ‘Things Change Anyway’, which won the Swedish Photobook of the Year and the Art Publication of the Year from the International Association of Art Critics, Denmark (2024).
Coble lives and works in Gothenburg.
Image: MC Coble.
