I Want To Break Free, (2021)

This performance video work is a celebratory conclusion to my PhD research Evoking The Invisible Lesbian Through Creative Practice (2019-2023). Made in my bedroom during Covid-19 lockdown in Melbourne, the video features me in character performing to the 1984 pop song I Want To Break Free (written and performed by British band Queen, with Freddie Mercury famously performing in drag in the video clip). In the work, the teenage tomboy meets the invisible lesbian in a dance-off that brings the black and white past into the present, signified by the cartoonish filter overlaying the video. The title of the work, I Want To Break is borrowed from the song by Queen, that was an anthem played in gay clubs when I was coming out. It is a song of emancipation and celebration. The year of the song’s release – in 1984 –was the year I met the first proud lesbian of my life, who danced freely at Fire Island, Edinburghs first gay bar. It would also mark the year I took the photograph titled a copy of a self-portrait 1984 (see Jimmy 1984 in next section), a photograph that emerged in this research as a potent agent of change in my past.