Steven Cohen’s Performance Artwork, Ugly Girl at the Rugby: Confronting Heteronormativity and Heteropatriarchy

Abstract

The author argues that Steven Cohen’s Ugly Girl at the Rugby communicates the denunciation of heteropatriarchy, including normative society’s regard for sexual binaries. In this way, the dominion of heteropatriarchy over sexual minority groups, for example homosexuals, is challenged. The author highlights that Cohen presents himself as a queer formation, nonconforming to Western society’s heterosexual yardsticks. The article further postulates that, with this artwork, Cohen opposes heteronormativity, heterosexuality and heteropatriarchy, therefore questioning the cultural view that heterosexuality represents the only standard and acknowledged type of sexuality. In addition, from the context of queer studies, the author hypothesises that heterosexual society accepts sexuality’s focus on biology, and that individuals’ only suitable form of sexual attraction is founded on the opposite sex. This belief is opposed by analysing the principles by Butler, Sedgwick and Foucault who suggest that sexuality is a social construct and that collective motivations affect gender and sexual distinctiveness more substantially than biology. A significant finding is that Ugly Girl at the Rugby positions queer performance as a dispute medium to provoke a distinct response among the participants, such as setting up anxiety through enticing them to relate with and respond to the artwork. Cohen manages to turn spectators unintentionally into artists themselves, playing the roles of heteropatriarchal males. While doing this, he exhibits gender as a performance based on collective norms.