Reworking The White-Masculine Ideal

This text functions as an exploration of self through artistic practice, a designated space for reflection on contemporary Queer experience. In looking specifically at the permeation of the idealized-white-masculine figure as found within Western visual culture, social media and gay pornography become isolated as sites where these figures are commonly found. This line of inquiry defines how the ideal is reified through these differing digital platforms and the social implications the homogenized male form has on raced individuals. In addition to determining the image of the perfect masculine physique through research, this text expands on how its\u27 imaged representation becomes material that supports a multidisciplinary practice. The result of such endeavors is layered collage works as well as performative video works that are each grounded in relevant research centered on sexuality, marginalized identities, and media studies. This theoretical contextualization hinges primarily on texts such as Jose Esteban Munoz\u27s Disidentifications, Hito Stereyl\u27s A Thing Like You and Me, and Guy Snaith\u27s essay, Tom\u27s Men: The Masculinization of Homosexuality and the Homosexualization of Masculinity at the End of the Twentieth Century. The works discussed in this thesis function as a disruption of idealized masculinity and reworking it into an art object that lends itself to the visibility of othered makers