Pink Triangles - 2017. Digital photographs and pink builder line, 80cm x 80cm, 110cm x 110cm, 80cm x 50cm
In reference to sociology, history or folk art, Christophe Canato’s body of work explores male gender identities and sexual orientations within cultural, politic and religious background.
In the current context where Australians will have to decide on the same-sex marriage topic that divides them, The Space Between Us reflects a queer perspective in a desire for emancipation as a collective reflection.
For the 2017 Joondalup Invitation Art Award the artist proposes three portraits titled Pink Triangle #1, Pink Triangle #2, Pink Triangle #3.
Using the working men environment props in his compositions such as pink builder line or bunting banner pink triangle flags. The pink triangle also represents the Act-Up gay rights symbol (30 years anniversary in 2017) which was originally rendered in pink and used pointed downward on a Nazi concentration camp badge to denote homosexual men.
It is the double meaning and the confusion that can be hidden behind these compositions that interest the artist. Stigmatisation or the way in which imagery elevates the status of individuals as well as the bounderies of what is normal or abnormal, acceptable or unacceptable in our collective memories.
Recurrent in Christophe Canato’s work, it is also a demonstration of the power of staging the male body in order to deliver physical and emotional compositions such as idolatry, leadership, fantasies, grotesqueness or oppressiveness.
