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Deconstructing Gender Identity and Non-Perfection in the Photographs of Yurie Nagashima

Based on the 2012 symposium ‘On Perfection’ held at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, this peer-reviewed book explores the ways in which artists frame the current social and political condition through the prism of perfection. The chapter analyses photographs by the contemporary Japanese artist Yurie Nagashima, the main subject of the author’s doctoral research, in relation to notions of performance, gender identity and a cultural dimension referred to as “non-perfection”. The chapter considers the emergence of Nagashima's photographic non-perfection against the paradigm of beauty, flawlessness and perfection in the representation of the female body in Japanese visual culture. The chapter argues that negative criticisms about Nagashima’s work since the mid-1990s must be considered in relation to phallocentricism and Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytical framework. The book also includes the transcript of a panel discussion, chaired by Mark Durden, between Marco Bohr and the Turner Prize nominee Louise Wilson.