Me and Aphrodite

Me and Aphrodite is a creative exploration of personal gender transition, examining physical transformation, the performance of femininity, and the relationship between the body and classical ideals of female beauty. The exhibition reflects on the lived experience of gender-affirming medical procedures, the learning and embodiment of gender performance, whilst referencing both contemporary notions of identity and classical ideals of femininity.
The work is structured across three interconnected strands. The first, Physical Transformation, presents diaristic photographic documentation of recovery following gender-affirming surgeries, including facial feminisation and genital reconstruction. This is extended through full-body photogrammetry scans, capturing pre- and post-surgical states and translated into stylised CGI renders that reference classical sculpture and idealised form.
The second strand, Gender as Performance, draws on theoretical frameworks to explore femininity as a learned and repeated set of gestures, behaviours and social cues. Using motion-capture animation, the work visualises these embodied performances, revealing gender as both constructed and continuously enacted.
The third strand, Idealised Femininity and the Male Gaze, reflects on the tension between self-determined identity and historical representations of the female body. Classical and contemporary archetypes of Aphrodite and Venus are reinterpreted through photographic prints of sculptural works, alongside reflections on how the artist’s own body has been shaped through medical, cultural and aesthetic systems inherently influenced by the male gaze.