Twenty-seven years after starring in Orlando, a film adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel, Tilda Swinton became a guest-editor in the Aperture 235 – Summer 2019 issue, and curator of an accompanying exhibition around the theme of the gender fluid, extraordinary character that is Orlando.
Some days ago we saw Tilda Swinton in conversation with B. Ruby Rich. Today, time for the exhibition.
Collier Schorr has long been interested in how a body changes. For several years, she followed a model named Casil McArthur, who transitions over the course of Schorr’s project Untitled (Casil) from boyish girl to girlish boy, from artist’s muse to Bowie-like chameleon. Schorr remembers meeting Casil just as Casil had begun to start modeling as a young man rather than as a young woman. When Casil first began to transition, he worried about his future as a model. But the partnership with Schorr was perfectly legible within the fashion world, with fashions moving away from his/her clothing and toward the concept of they/them. Schorr explains that Casil’s fantasmatic appeal may have changed as he transitioned, but the mystery and the enigmatic quality that a model must project remained constant.
Aperture, New York
June 5th, 2019
The Humble Fabulist 