Book Launch + Screening + Q&A Positions by K8 Hardy

The next MACK Cinema Club celebrates the release of K8 Hardy’s new book, Positions, with a special screening of Outfitumentary (2016), followed by a Q&A with London-based artist and curator Nina Manandhar.

Hardy’s Position Series (2007–12) uses photography to explore identity as performance and construction. Featuring Hardy, her sister and mannequins in eclectic clothes, wigs and makeup, the images suggest personas beyond normative categories of identity and gender expression. Darkroom interventions further expose the photograph as a deliberate construction rather than fixed truth.

Positions brings together all fifty photographs alongside previously unseen images, situating Hardy’s work within the DIY fashion, art and thrift scenes of queer subcultures in early 2000s New York. Through self-objectification, Hardy challenges the objectification of the female body, queers portraiture and questions exclusionary art institutions.

The event begins with a screening of Outfitumentary (2016). In 2001, Hardy began documenting her outfits on video. Over the following eleven years, until the camera broke, she captured her outfits and the act of outfitting on a fairly consistent, if not daily, basis.

Following the film, Hardy will be in conversation with London-based artist and curator Nina Manandhar.

still from Outfitumentary (2016). ©K8 Hardy. Courtesy of the artist, Hardy Studio, Picture Palace Pictures

Bios K8 HARDY (b. 1977, Fort Worth, Texas) lives and works in New York. Hardy works across varied mediums, including video, photography, and sculpture. She is a founding member of the queer feminist journal and artist collective LTTR. Her work has been exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, MoMA PS1, Higher Pictures, Reena Spaulings Fine Art, and Karma International, New York; Dallas Contemporary, Texas; and Tate Modern, London, and is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Nina Manandhar is a London based artist and curator working with photography, archives and participation. In her research led practice, Nina explores the relationship between place, style and identity. She is the author of What We Wore – A People’s History of British Style: a photographic documentary of street and subculture viewed through the lens of the people living it. She has presented projects at The Photographers’ Gallery, Wellcome Collection, RIBA, Tate and London Museum. She is Stage Two Lead on the Fashion Communication BA at Central Saint Martins.