Mateas Pares: Could you tell us a little bit about the background of the video work?

Alberte Skronski: I have been working with the character in this video piece for a while,
making multiple pieces including photography, sculpture, and video and I am also working on a performance. Taking a food item or everyday object and making it human size and anthropomorphizing it, is something I continuously do in my work as I think it shows the grotesqueness of everyday life and human interactions.

When I wanted to create a stripper/burlesque performer I found the corn an obvious choice as the
corn on the cob is already wearing "clothes " that you take off as you shuck the corn and remove its husk. It's also super phallic in nature and it explodes and makes white popcorn, the perfect material for a non-human pornstar. 

In my work, I often make fully constructed recreations of everyday life, or at least recreate objects we know from everyday life. The reason I build everything from scratch and don’t just shoot on location and search for props that look like I want them too is that I’m not interested in reality. On the contrary, I am interested in fantasy and the hyper-real. This is also why my characters are often quite exaggerated, bordering on cartoonish. Like with my corn, it's not a woman, it is the corn together with some of the characteristics and accessories we connect with femininity. Just like I prefer fantasy over reality, I am much more interested in the construction and performance of femininity vs. real femininity. 

Picture from the video Cornstar, by Alberte Skronski

I’m looking forward to my next corn-on-the-cob meal after this explanation. You are using the corn as a strap-on. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

When I figured out I wanted to do a masturbation video I thought it was a perfect opportunity to make a strap-on with corn on the cob because it is so phallic, and it also has the same "skin tone" as the corn character. I always love using real materials instead of plastic so using a real corn felt like a fun challenge to work with. Also, it is ribbed for your pleasure. 

How come you wanted to make a male masturbation, and not a female masturbation?

I don’t see the character as male or female, it’s an anthropomorphic corn. That’s why I gave it a strap-on, as the corn has a phallic shape, it felt most natural. 

Alberte Skronski

That’s interesting, because at the same time you have used typically heteronormative tropes in the form of the bra and the high heels. Could you tell us a little bit about the background of that decision?

For me, the heels and the bra isn't so much about heteronormativity, but when the character wears them it’s instead about the act of genderfuckery — the same reason as why I chose to wear a strap-on. Also, the piece is much more focused on sexuality, not gender expression :)

Coming from a queer background, do you think it’s easier to work with the body than if you would be a heterosexual man?

Both yes and no, I’m not sure it has to do with a queer background, but I think growing up with a female body there is both more stigma and encouragement from society in showing your body than if you are a man. 

At the same time, the nude male body is quite stigmatized as well, wouldn’t you say? A Burt Reynolds documentary tells the anecdote of when he posed naked in Playboy Magazine, and how he risked his career doing that. And Jukka Korkeila, also in this exhibition, used the depiction of the male body as an artistic way of coming out as gay, in a heterosexual environment where it was seen as taboo to display a nude male body. It seems to me that men are told to keep their clothes on, and women to keep their clothes off, to a large extent.

Yes, I very much agree with the clothes on/off comment. I also think there is even less accept the end of bodily diversity with male bodies. But as an artist - the easiest way for a woman to be shown in an art gallery is to be depicted nude by a male artist. But for me this isn’t an exhibition about the male body, it is about cocks which is its own thing. And everyone can buy their own cock and strap it on and to me that feels both fun, playful and powerful 

Explore all artists and artworks from the exhibition COCKS! 

Alberte Skronski on Artworks & Instagram 

Interview by: Mateas Pares