Sour-Puss: The Opera is the result of a 5-year collaboration
between artist duo Diogo Duarte and Jessica Mitchell who also work
in mental health. Consisting of photographs, drawings and texts,
the 'Sour-Puss' of the title is a composite character sometimes
based on real-life Mitchell and real-life Duarte and their life
experiences. Duarte and Mitchell were colleagues turned and then
friends. The birth of 'Sour-Puss' was a gradual one emerging
through conversations and arguments where they uncovered
similarities in worldview, their feelings relating to themselves
and a mutual dislike for 'positive thinking'. 'The composite
character bearing both biographical and fictional traits was
created to expose the hypocrisies and inconsistencies within
normative power structures. 'Sour-Puss' has no desire to 'accept'
or 'assimilate' mainstream versions of gender and sexuality.
'Sour-Puss' is in the truest sense of the word, queer'. 'She is
neither passive nor an object nor a limp body for my eyes to feast
on. Even though my gaze, when I frame the photograph, is
irrevocably mine and not Jessica's, conceptually it's not just my
gaze, it's ours. That is fundamentally what makes this
collaboration unique. The story of the woman in the photographs and
her drawings, but also her narrative, arose out of many hours of
conversing with Jessica about pain and repression, but also about
happiness and freedom'. - Diogo Duarte 'The series has led to some
honest and challenging conversations. It has shocked me just how
surprised some people are that anyone would take pictures of a
woman who looks like me ... I think middle-aged women terrify
people --we are uncategorisable, we are harbingers of the 'doom'
facing us all and we are cut loose, at least potentially, from many
of the roles society likes to impose on women. Somehow 'Sour-Puss'
embodies this--that I might do anything--and, in fact, I plan to'.
- Jessica Mitchell 'Melancholia and a sense of isolation or
alienation, feeling fundamentally wrong or at odds with the world,
are the backing track to the work. Questions are raised concerning
sexuality and gender, age and beauty, body image, and even the idea
of redemption or reconciliation and how it can be possible--or if
it can be possible-- to live within the context of one's own
'insanities, ' accepting these as part of whom one is. Acceptance
of oneself--the good, the bad and the ugly, or, as Mitchell says:
'loving oneself, and screwing up, and loving one's self
again--accepting all the imperfections'. - From the essay by Anna
McNay
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