ABSTRACT
This chapter examines portraitures, both photographic and cartoons, as a means of self-analysis that enables an intense engagement of the artists in a dialogue with the paradigm of their respective visual art forms. Addressing Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoirs Fun Home and Claude Cahun’s photographic self-portraits, it illustrates the performative functions of these self-reflections in dialogue with the paradigm of visual arts and examines the diverse modalities of agency facilitated by this ocular-centric narrative. Cahun’s photomontage, almost a century ahead of her time, is representative of the continual questions she posed to the constricted perceptions of gender norms in society through the means of appropriation of her androgynous appearance. Whether concealed or flagrant, Cahun’s photography defies fixity of gender identity, and her narrating subject ascribes an individual agency to the multiple selves of the artist in the acts of exposure. Parallel to Cahun’s conceptual narratives, the ‘body’ in Bechdel remains significant wherein her physical appearance underlies sexual identity.
