Ambiguous Art Edit
The Blur of Gender

According to Sigmund Freud, “Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.”

For most people, the state of ambiguity is an uncomfortable one, from the blurring of gender roles to gender itself. The world as we think we know it is constantly being challenged. Primetime television had three gender-bending characters in the 07 fall schedule, all transvestites, well-defined gender-bending with the ambiguity removed.

Art helps us deal with ambiguity, and takes us to a another place - an undefined place. Never was this more in evidence than in Miami during the art shows in December. At Beachside, the performance artist Donald Urquhart and his high camp “Palace of Tears” left gender irrelevant as did the charming eccentrics Eva & Adele, who call themselves “Hermaphrodites.” Watch the art that is “Eva & Adele” at the opening of their own art on paper. Despite what Freud may have thought a century ago, ambiguity is much more interesting today than the certainty of a gender label.