Grace Jones

GRACE JONES — BODY, STILLNESS, DRAG & THE SCULPTURAL PERSONA

Jones transforms the pop body toward sculpture, graphic design, drag, mask and architecture. Her relationship with Jean-Paul Goude must not be reduced to harmonious co-authorship: later scholarship emphasises that Jones resisted the idea that her identity was simply created by Goude and insisted on her agency within a complicated collaboration. ([Oxford Academic][3])

STILLNESS

Jones described her stage vocabulary simply: she could walk and freeze. Research connects this sculptural stillness to Japanese performance traditions encountered through collaborations with Issey Miyake, particularly the Kabuki mie pose. ([research.ed.ac.uk][4]) Stillness can command the visual field; a frozen body becomes image.

A ONE MAN SHOW

In A One Man Show, developed with Goude, Jones's image multiplies. During Feel Up, Grace-like figures appear; in Demolition Man, multiplication becomes an almost militarised phalanx. This breaks STAR = ONE UNIQUE BODY and produces image, mask, replica and multiple performer.

DRAG / GENDER / RACE

Her androgyny is not simply unisex fashion. Scholarship describes drag, theatricality, disidentification and exaggerated strangeness as ways Black and gendered identity becomes difficult to stabilise. The body becomes woman/man, Black body/futuristic object, human/sculpture and self/image. ([Taylor & Francis Online][6])

CONTRADICTION

Stylised Black embodiment can produce agency and iconicity while remaining vulnerable to fetishisation, distortion and objectification. Keep active: BODY AS SELF-INVENTION ↔ BODY AS MATERIAL FOR IMAGE-MAKING.