Who is Puberty and how does she hit? (2014-2016)​​

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Sculptor Sidney Mullis finds herself wedged in a space where her gender matters tremendously and matters not very much at all. ​Working with performance-based video, interactive objects, and sculpture, Mullis asks what it means to be woman—and to understand the narrow bandwidth in which she can be performed, safely and without scrutiny, despite her shifting reality. 

 

Considering gender to be a stylized repetition of acts, Mullis studies how woman is looped in social space. She approaches gender through a coming-of-age lens, focusing on the moments when bodies first learn to repeat gestures, postures, and behaviors that communicate gender. She often uses techniques that are suitable for children’s crafts, such as papier-mâché, candle making, and hand sewing, alongside materials that are marketed to girls, like spandex leotards and fake fingernails, which are designed to rehearse and perform socially appropriate scripts of femininity.

 

By merging and altering these materials, Mullis interrupts their expected functions and cultural legibility. Detached from their usual contexts, these materials are no longer able to perform femininity without question. Instead, they become tools for rewriting the codes and directives that govern how gender is learned, embodied, and enforced. Through these combinations, Mullis asks: What motions, shapes, fabrics, and languages has our culture determined to mean “woman”? Believing gender operates on a fluid spectrum, Mullis makes work to understand what woman is and how woman operates upon and through bodies.

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Click here to see an exhibition of this body of work.