Veronique Charlotte’s Gender Project is a platform to document, discuss, and share experiences around gender fluidity and identity. Through photography and performance, she uses the body as a vehicle of expression and storytelling: an opportunity both to find common ground and celebrate difference.
Q > Art and activism — what do you pursue and/or hope to pursue more in your work?
A > My work focuses on the body in relation to the social environment, and gives shape to the thread of human connection. My approach is experimental and performative, pushing the body and mind to the limit in pursuit of greater clarity and release based on gender identity, society and kindness. I strongly believe in collaborative working practices and education.
I believe it is necessary to keep open the spectrum of possibilities in communication. Art and activism coexist together in order to awaken the mind and liberate inspiration in others.
Q > How does where you live affect your work?
A > I have been based in London for about eight years now, [and] for sure this capital has been really important for what I have done till now, [as] a multicultural environment filled with so many people from all over the word with so many different backgrounds. My work is based on people and connection so I guess I started my Gender journey in the right place at the right time; I really feel all this is meant to be started here.
Q > What’s the most satisfying part of the creative process?
A > The shooting section is one of the most satisfying parts but also one of the most intense sides of my work. You need to find an inner harmony between your body and your mind in order to create the perfect balance to be ready and open to deal with 100 new people all different and unique.
But when you get in that specific state, the flow, everything becomes one and that is the real satisfaction, the consciousness regarding what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.
Q > What inspires you?
A > Inspiration comes from many things, but listening is my way to get inspired. I try to get my work done through the issue of the people that I meet during Gender and during my day-to-day life.
But you know sometimes I just fall in love with something that I read, sometimes when I feel I need more input I do some meditation and I ask the universe to show me some signs; we are our own universe but sometimes we just need to take the time to reconnect with ourselves.
Q > Is work personal to you? Do you keep your work separate from your personal life?
A > It is just as personal as when I started for sure, but the feeling is fleeting. I’m doing this for a big cause and for a bigger picture — you know this is in relation to everyone, to you that read me now too.
Personally this project helped me heal day by day; I detached my inner ego to give hope and opportunity to anyone who wants to be part of this movement, to make a change. I have become my project and this is what I’m doing in life.
I don’t know if I have become a tool, sometimes I feel that all this is bigger than any of my vision but I’m growing with Gender in relation to everyone involved and I can’t be more grateful.
Q > Could you give us an overview of the Gender Project and tell us which reactions, questions or perception-shifts do you hope to raise in the viewer?
A > Gender Project is a social photography project — the project started from the etymology of the word Gender, which is only vaguely associated with sex and more widely associated from Latin to the word “KINDNESS”. Gender aims to tell 1000 stories through 100 portraits that narrate the social cross-section of 10 world capitals, with only one goal: to break down walls and difficulties that prevent us from accepting the differences that make us unique.
As an artist, I am happy to share and talk about modern social problems. With the arrival of new technologies, we risk losing face-to-face communication. The world of emotions, feelings and words is a world that doesn’t need screens. The project is a “mark-making” exercise that also explores our collective consciousness of what we are, can do and feel.
This collection showcases collective memory as an object in flux, which depends on our intervention. The portraits commemorate a multicultural and diverse community that exists at this time, but they also highlight the interdependence of each character in order to create a safe space for this linearity, also underlining the need to continually revisit and observe the demand for identity and representation.
GENDER is an exploration of the practice of the therapeutic arts in which photography is a tool that allows the catharsis of the subject and the photographer. All I want to do is raise awareness.
Q > Tell us a disturbing or inspiring story you refuse to forget.
A > I don’t really have any disturbing stories; I believe that when you work in the right way and on the right path things work in a genuine and peaceful direction.
So many things have happened in the past three years, at first I thought they were just coincidences but, like I say, everything seems to take the right time and the right space. Gender has been blessed in some sort of way. I don’t refuse anything, I accept everything.
Q > Which efforts should be amplified to address issues related with gender and prejudice?
A > It’s really long work, everyone should start by looking inside themselves, and that is not as easy as it sounds, just because we are afraid of the public opinion, so as a defence mechanism we prefer to judge, demolishing someone else’s beliefs in order to increase our own ego.
I certainly believe that we need more education in terms of gender identity… then we can maybe start the right journey to normalising the stereotypes of differences.
Veronique Charlotte is a creative art director, social activist and visual artist from Italy. Her first ventures into the industry were through fashion and editorial photography. Her personal work is introspective — it focuses on the body in relation to the social environment. Charlotte has worked as a UK Government tutor at the London College of Fashion.
