Yelaman Muqtarkhan
The "monster" as a transgender or non-binary subject who lives in transition, challenging the strict binary gender normsestablished by medicine, psychoanalysis,and colonial history women and drag queens to conceal the genitals.
Drawing on P.B. Preciado and Judith Butler, the framework of gender performativity and the figure of the "monster" operates differently across my practice. In one painting I use an iconic drag character called Kelinka Sabina, played and created by Kazakh showman Nurtas Adambaev and ask whether he performed tucking, placing a tucking diagram alongside his portrait, creating the boundaries between performance, gender, and the body. In another work I connect the "monster" figure to imprisoned Uyghurs and Kazakhs in Xinjiang camps where they are treated as "abnormal" subjects to be corrected. They are the monsters in the eyes of the state that erases identity to create compliant Chinese citizens.