Synopsis "Sour-Puss: The Opera (in English)"
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 emergingthrough conversations and arguments where they uncovered similarities inworldview, their feelings relating to themselves and a mutual dislike for'positive thinking'. 'The composite character bearing both biographical and fictional traits wascreated to expose the hypocrisies and inconsistencies within normative powerstructures. 'Sour-Puss' has no desire to 'accept' or 'assimilate' mainstreamversions of gender and sexuality. 'Sour-Puss' is in the truest sense of theword, 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 notJessica's, conceptually it's not just my gaze, it's ours. That is fundamentallywhat makes this collaboration unique. The story of the woman in the photographsand her drawings, but also her narrative, arose out of many hours of conversingwith Jessica about pain and repression, but also about happiness and freedom'.- Diogo Duarte 'The series has led to some honest and challenging conversations. It hasshocked me just how surprised some people are that anyone would take picturesof a woman who looks like me ... I think middle-aged women terrify people --we areuncategorisable, we are harbingers of the 'doom' facing us all and we are cutloose, at least potentially, from many of the roles society likes to impose onwomen. 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 fundamentallywrong or at odds with the world, are the backing track to the work. Questionsare raised concerning sexuality and gender, age and beauty, body image, andeven the idea of redemption or reconciliation and how it can be possible--or ifit can be possible-- to live within the context of one's own 'insanities, ' accepting these as part of whom one is. Acceptance ofoneself--the good, the bad and the ugly, or, as Mitchell says: 'loving oneself, and screwing up, andloving one's self again--accepting all the imperfections'. - From the essay byAnna McNay
