My Heart the Rock Star

Part of the My Heart series initiated by Annie Martin, Nik Forrest and Nelson Henricks. In his reflection on gender and identification, the artist delves into childhood memories to explores their early fascination with gender mutability. Recalling their love for late-70s rock stars, Forrest compares the performativity implicit in rock’n’roll with the possibility of creating and re-creating one’s own gender and persona as an ongoing, iterative process. The sounds and images of 70’s rock provided an imaginative, experimental space where normative binary restrictions were loosened, and transformation became possible. 

This video has been widely shown across North America and Europe and the soundtrack (produced by Forrest using their own voice and samples from a Patti Smith song remixed in Protools) is featured on the vinyl record accompanying the Catalogue “Volumes” published by the Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto Mississauga.