Ash Baayens

These Hands do not belong to me

In my art, I explore notions and concepts of gender and sexuality. This work uses acrylic painting to bring forward ideas of emphasized feminity in North America and to subvert these traditional notions of femininity. My work questions active constructions of female presenting persons' cultural proscriptions and prescriptions. By putting my “femine” head onto a male body which goes out of the culturally idealized notion of gender. Gender is something we build, rather than built in.

Inspired by Hope Gangloff’s “Serious Snack”

“I can feel the divots within my own fingertips

Scratching and course even underneath the flappy bits

cold dry and hard they feel to me

dainty fragile and small they seeing me

no matter the cracks in sores I will always have feminine hands

These hands do not belong to me. “