Animal Drag

Nicola McCartney is an artist and educator, and Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies on the Fashion, Jewellery and Textiles programmes at Central Saint Martins. She also works across Fine Art and for external institutions.

• Introduction: The critical and conscious performance of animality – Nicola McCartneyPart I Retrospective Animal Drag1 Reciprocity in motion, nonhuman and material agencies across contemporary and historical contact zones – Donatella Barbieri and Denise Ackerl2 Journey to the end of the night: Abjection, narcissism and Animal Drag in Boldini’s portraits of Luisa Casati – Penelope WicksonPart II Contemporary critiques3 Mimetic Animal Drag as Ecological Crisis Ritual: Hanna Tuulikki’s Deer Dancer (2019) – Zaynah Akeel4 Tail envy: Rethinking psychoanalytic models of desire through Marianna Simnett’s The Severed Tail (2022) – Elisabetta GarlettiPart III Power in playing5 Rhinos, raccoons, and salmon: The feminist-queer theatre creation of Animacy Theatre Collective – Alexandra Simpson and Morgan Brie Johnson6 Love, lipstick and liberation: Artistic activism as a drag cow – Daniel Hellman and Soya the Cow7 Animalesque drag: Ontopolitics of intensity in Andrea Palašti’s Fitness for Unlikely Species (2022–) – Andrija FilipovicPart IV Dressing up and stripping down8 Unbridled: Dragging nudity in Ann Oren’s Piaffe (2022) – Killian O’Dwyer9 Myasthenia Gravis and Madame Web: Weaving my supercrip disease, spiders and popular culture – Nicola McCartney