"Solitary Fruit is an exploration into the complexity of how gender, sexuality and race/ethnicity interact to shape the dynamics of power, privilege and vulnerability. Griffin wanted to enhance freedom and equality but described painfully and in great detail how shocked he was the first time he saw his newly black face in a mirror – a racist reflex that undoubtedly emerged from his own upbringing deep in the heart of Texas. The fact that Griffin was unable to get through to the core of his own privileged life as a white man – despite his commitment to the black civil rights movement – can also be seen in his naive use of blackface, a racist tradition which, unlike how Griffin intended to use it, has nothing to do with the lives experienced by black people and everything to do with the performance of being white. Hazekamp, on the other hand, investigates how positions such as being white and male – and the relationship between the two – take shape in light of American black history, not based on an attempt to step into the shoes of a racialised 'other' but by ambivalently embodying the social norms. By making the traditionally accepted position of the white male atypical, Hazekamp not only reverses the concept of Griffin's project but also reveals the essentialist assumptions on which that project had been based."

Louis van den Hengel, "Transposities: Risk Hazekamp en de kunst van gender", in: Sekse: Een begripsgeschiedenis (pp.251-260)





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