What happens when men pose as women and women pose as men? Cecilia Ulfsdotter Klementson continues to ask that question in her second show with the gallery where she uses the power of the pose to identify and deconstruct gender roles and imagine a future where gender is obsolete.

The artist is showing her latest paintings from London following her degree show at the Royal College of Art this past spring. Ulfsdotter Klementsson paints layers of nude figures, using one colour at a time, allowing it to dry before adding the next. Each layer leaves traces of previous layers. She also circles where shadows begin and end, rather than filling them in with regular hatching techniques that use closely spaced parallel lines to create shading effects. By revealing the entire process to the viewer and leaving part of the painting unfinished, the underlying drawing shows through. Metaphorically speaking, Ulfsdotter Klementsson is asking what constitutes skin — and gender. It’s a thought-provoking question. Cecilia Ulfsdotter Klementsson is a Swedish artist currently based in Stockholm.

Naked Drag is gender subversive poses posed by naked bodies, using the power of the pose alone to both identify and deconstruct gender roles. The poses pose the inevitable question: what happens when men are posed as the other, and when women are posed as men? I am interested in asking the question and provoking thought rather than supplying an ultimate answer. Although, my work aims to deconstruct gender roles, into an unimagined future where gender is obsolete. I coined the term Naked Drag in my dissertation at the Royal College of Art 2021. The dissertation was written on the power of the pose in contemporary and historical art to do the same thing - to both identify and deconstruct gender roles. In the dissertation, I looked at Judith Butler’s call for drag to expose gender for what it is - a performance. The parody and over-exaggeration reveals the gender roles, and the subversion of sexes shows that it can be performed by either sex. I believe everyone is non-binary, beneath the construction of gender.