The Body is a Fort

There is a sensual, intentionally constructed discomfort in Christopher Lacroix’s work. Often performative with an attention to lens-based documentation, Lacroix’s endeavours connect what he passionately describes as “queer existence” to agency, subjectivity, and personhood. At the crossroads of those arenas, he renders a (queer) male body that continuously disrupts what is considered “standard” within mainstream narratives, while exploring and normalizing shame. To put it a bit more colloquially, Lacroix’s practice unapologetically refuses to meet the politicized “standards” of being queer.

Lacroix has enacted a number of performances where he has put himself in classically “embarrassing” situations, which usually point to a dramatized, painful, but conscious self-deprecation. These works made clear Lacroix’s determi- nation to reject normative and heteronormative systems by queering the everyday.

In the work Perversions come in all sizes (2019), a multimedia installation that bestows his own body, Lacroix gets fed cookies while being constrained in a machine that emulates home-gym cardio equipment. But here’s the twist: he is the one that operates the machine. Made of shining metal and maroon leather, the custom-made machine embodies a machinist aesthetic reminiscent of the prevailing culture of fitness, but the cookie-feeding also gives it a somewhat BDSM-level fantastic flare. In a 2019 live installation of this work, the artist could be seen manually loading up cookies on a conveyor belt, foot paddling to activate the belt until the cookies come towards him, catching the cookies with his mouth, retreating his body on the leather seat, then repeating. The forced feeding, combined with instrumentality, is certainly erotic and kinky, but the quality of cookie as a mundane and torpid object smooths out the edge of eroticism, generating a disassociative repertoire.

Across the room, hung on the wall, is a framed image of a cookie with red icing in the shape of a hashtag. There, the cookie appears to become the discipline—a statement, or a slogan of some sort, that can often be seen in self-betterment campaigns. It also subtly implicates the Internet’s ob- session with instant fame and desire: the thirst is real. With such a cheeky and all-lowercase title, the print thank you v v much i feel better already and u? (2019) assumes the role of a (literally) sugarcoated threat to the body and its very state of being. Come to think of it, back to the other side of the room, the cookies make Lacroix choke.

This way, Lacroix establishes a murky boundary between self-discipline and intemperance, incorporating a visual gesture of absurdity and self-inflicted pain. It seems to be controlling a particular external peril, but the entirety of the strain is generated within. Curious viewers might wonder what the cookies mean and why there are so many of them. An interesting anecdotal detail, according to the artist, may cause a few giggles: the number of the cookies that the artist forces himself to swallow is the number of people he has had sex with over the years. Given that queerness is always unfairly associated with acolasia, this detail becomes an innuendo that enforces an incredibly harmful prejudice.

Going beyond the employment of sexual desire and masochism, Lacroix further taunts contemporary gym culture, the pressure to have the perfect body, and, by all means, to practice (self-)discipline. The artist’s performative routine does not provide an immediate answer to an agenda on social critique. In fact, it presents itself as a hamster wheel of futility in a simultaneously self-congratulating, yet self-torturing, manner. But one thing is clear: Lacroix reassures his audience that he has ownership of his own body. Almost facetiously, he even pillows his head with a plaster cast of his hands.

The artist’s criticisms of normalcy are sprucely realized with personal, daily moments and objects. There are reasons for needing to remain bound (2017), a six-hour durational performance, witnesses the artist continuously reading one volume of his yearly journal, word by word backwards, until his voice dries. He would then proceed to drink water, continue to read, and subsequently pee in his pants—an act, that although humorous, is considered inglorious and shameful. Lacroix fabricates a stage for moments of self-inspection; however, the words do not make much sense, and therefore, this experiment for self-inspection has been set up to fail. Playing with vulnerability and containment, the artist launches a jibe at stereotypical expectations of how a queer person should behave, as well as how these entrenched perceptions are manifested in everyday queering. Far from having a “good boy gone rogue” moment, Lacroix maintains his posture, balanced and calm, while simultaneously embodying an internalized tension between the self and the larger structure.

As unapologetic as Lacroix is “embarrassing” himself, he pokes fun at “being sorry” in his 2020 work, We do not know when we started, we will not know when we will end. Taking the form of a multi-frame video, the work records the artist strenuously and gingerly hugging balloons until they explode. Horizontally, in the video, as each balloon explodes, they piece together sentences, “I AM SORRY,” “YOU’RE WELCOME,” and “YOU’RE SORRY,” coalescing into a non-linear narrative. It is intentionally unclear whom these words are supposed to be spoken to, but the series of statements together produces a coy and passive-aggressive tone, opposing a genuine concession. It does, though, carry a layer of guilt—guilt that is dramatically acted out as defence. In the soundscape, the balloon popping is alarming and pitchy, contrasting the pliable tone of the texts. Delightfully, there is a sense of navigating aggression and, at the same time, submission in the work. This contradiction highlights the importance of the self that mirrors the very existence of a queer body.

The artist also photographed the deflated balloons as part of the work. Once bloated, celebratory, and feisty, the balloons are now merely a flamboyant, shrivelled pile of plastics that have nothing to give. A swan song that carries the last straw of the balloons’ obstinacy, the photographs act as documentation of the aftermath of a designed destruction, as well as how Lacroix, seemingly the messenger, destroys the messages and sees through their demise.

In current discourse concerning formulations of identity, we seem to frequently, conveniently look to “resistance” and to navigate the “fringed,” despite the intricacies of each subject position. Lacroix’s work is perhaps no exception. However, it centres on subjectivity from a proactive and honest position: the artist controls the means of production. He also offers something else: self-commitment and attunement. It channels a calculated gesture of letting go while maintaining a delicate balance—everything is at stake, but he creates and controls all the stakes.

In this era of liberal individualism, there is the pressure, or even a tendency, to fall into the trap of the status quo that innately favours and implements structural biases. Within this normalcy, there are constant battles against the notion of masculinity when conforming to a necessity to respond to such an idea. What goes hand in hand with that is the relentless, perpetual performance of “gayness,” sanctioned by social norms. Lacroix’s work dances around all of those ideas, yet, it refuses to offer solutions to rectify them.

Ultimately, the deliberate “failure” to be queer, as well as giving rein to that “failure,” in the artist’s work turns the table on the expected connotations of queerness. Taking on an autobiographical approach, Christopher Lacroix’s work offers some counter-entry points into a multitude of ways of being, ones that are tied with the ongoing, socio-political and institutional othering of the queer body.

Henry Heng Lu is a curator, writer, and artist based in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada. Currently, he is Curator + Interim Executive Director at Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. Prior to that, Lu served as the artistic director of Modern Fuel, an artist-run centre in Kingston, Ontario. He has presented independent projects through numerous channels, such as Creative Time Summit, Art Museum at the University of Toronto, The New Gallery, Vtape, and Trinity Square Video. His writings have been published by Canadian Art, ArtAsiaPacific, Yishu, C Magazine, Richmond Art Gallery, Koffler Centre of the Arts, PLATFORM Gallery, ArchDaily, and Gardiner Museum.

Feature image: Christopher Lacroix, We do not know when we started, we will not know when we will end, 2019. 7 frame video. Image courtesy of the artist.

This article is published in issue 38.1 of BlackFlash magazine. Get this issue