Bioart + Design Africa
VIAD
Imminent and Eminent Ecologies
Dean Hutton
Dean Hutton (ZA, 1976) is an artist who creates at the intersections of trans media visual culture, performance, and community action. Their practice merges documentary, fiction, and fantasy to produce radical queer counter-narratives and experiences aimed at repair and resistance. As Goldendean, they employ simple disruptive actions to share moments of soft courage, affirming the rights of all bodies to exist, be celebrated, and protected. Currently an artist-in-residence at the University of Johannesburg, their research embraces collaborative praxis and embodied play to produce new forms of artwork – sculptural objects made from sustainable materials and living biomatter that support ecosystem health and build cultural and ecological value for local communities.
General Artist Statement
My greater struggle as a ‘Soft Radical’ is finding a way to stay soft in a hard world – to be vulnerable and resilient, to not turn hard, while not being a walking wound. It is clear that the cause of radical softness begins in the body and my process is dedicated to becoming and staying soft. Resilience can help protect us from brutalising forces, to not meet violence unprepared or enact the same violence. Life is difficult enough to bear (bare) without the shame of losing your humanity. One stays soft out of need (knead).
My installations in public spaces explore how queer and trans fat bodies inhabit and take space – encouraging responding moments of soft courage that affirm the right of all bodies to exist, to be celebrated and protected, and to evoke tender feelings from an audience to let our bodies be safe together.
Conceiving a strategy that responds to the brutal environment we find ourselves in, as queer and trans artists, as (unwanted) soft bodies making work where we face increased control, criminalisation, and restriction of our bodies, presentation, and performance of gender globally. Our rights to who we love, who we are, how we dress – to safe visibility, in private, in public and online – is under threat because our existence is perceived as threatening in some conservative communities. While South Africa has strong protections for LGBTIQ citizens, global moves to restrict our freedoms cannot be ignored. Presently much of my research explores how to invite the forces of nature as artWork through labour and sustainable use of natural materials to create living sculpture.
Artist Statement on Floating Bodies
What if artworks directly intervene and heal the environments in which they live? What if the lifecycle of an artwork could transform place, and our relationship to nature? Goldendean’s Floating Bodies is based on the ecological invention of floating islands, offering sustainable solutions to improve water quality and ecological health. These islands facilitate natural filtration by using vegetation to remove pollutants, provide habitats for aquatic organisms, control harmful algae growth, reduce shoreline erosion, and enhance the aesthetic value of waterways. Included here are a series of material experiments developed to prototype a working model for a series of larger, modular Floating Bodies, to be constructed in a site-specific manner and installed in wetlands around the world. These Floating Bodies are made in response to local needs, and can also serve as educational tools, promoting research and public outreach on water quality and environmental stewardship, as well as highlighting the role of sculptural practices in ecological education. This work is the result of an initial research period during which Hutton was an artist-in-residence in the University of Johannesburg’s Arts & Culture artist in residence programme.
The making of the maquette at Nirox Sculpture Park was supported by the Claire & Edoardo Villa Will Trust, as well as the University of Johannesburg’s Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre’s (VIAD) Bioart + Design Africa research team. Thanks particularly to Sven Christian for curation; Xylan de Jager, Jaco Jonker, Jerome Davis and Prof. Michael Rudolph for advice; John Nkhoma and Charles Palm for assistance in making the maquette. The floating wetlands guidelines developed by @birdlife_sa also aided the conceptualisation of the basic floatation and building strategy.