A contemporary understanding of plastic\u2014mass-produced objects composed of synthetic polymers\u2014stems from the invention of artificial plastics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet, as the French philosopher Catherine Malabou reminds us, a broader history of plastic stretches back to the Greek understanding of plassein<\/em> as a capacity for moulding associated with the \u201cplastic arts,\u201d particularly sculpture.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain? <\/em>(New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 5.<\/span> The malleability of plastics seems to promise infinite transformation, yet mass manufacturing moulds these extraordinary synthetic materials into rigid predetermined shapes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Against the capitalist proliferation of petroleum-derived plastic commodities, queer femme aesthetics deploy the affective and glittering force of plasticity in embodied, sensory, relational works characterized by excess, playfulness, spectacle, saturation, and theatricality. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n In the performances of the multidisciplinary artists Tia Halliday and Sky Cubacub, plastic\u2019s bold colours, glimmering surfaces, and elastic textures reflect and perform the celebratory and utopic aspects of queer femme and gender-fluid life and politics. Reclaiming plastic\u2019s original meaning of creative expression and transformation (before it was subsumed by corporate machine-moulded commodities), Halliday\u2019s and Cubacub\u2019s performative practices activate a plasticity of continuous becoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Calgary-based multidisciplinary artist Tia Halliday mobilizes the performative plasticity of artificial colour in the shimmering surface of her photographic triptych Chroma\/Moto\/Philia 1\u20133<\/em> (2015) that depicts a woman struggling to emerge from a canvas covered in iridescent hot-pink fabric that appears to be polyamide-coated. The triptych\u2019s sequence progresses from stasis to movement as controlled form gives way to improvisational flux: in the first image the performer strikes a strong, centred pose recalling a balletic pli\u00e9; in the second, she rotates toward the bottom left corner of the canvas with one foot off the ground; the third image captures the figure in motion as the other foot is off the ground and blurred. Mediating between representation and abstraction, Halliday\u2019s choreography positions the figure to kinetically merge with the \u201cskin\u201d of the canvas and its synthetic pink plasticity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In their research on \u201cflaming color\u201d in queer painterly abstraction, art historian and curator Lex Morgan Lancaster explores how colour-as-materiality acts in excess of signification: bright, synthetic, vibrant\u2014even vibrating\u2014\u201cunnatural color\u201d is \u201can animating medium for queer tactics.\u201d Situating colour at the intersection of lustrous surface and substantive core, Lancaster theorizes \u201cthe tension between the optical surface of color and its viscous materiality,\u201d arguing that \u201cthe surface itself is matter\u201d that \u201coperates affectively as a field of interaction.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Lex Morgan Lancaster, Dragging Away: Queer Abstraction in Contemporary Art<\/em> (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022), 87\u201389, 28, 97\u201398.<\/span> The queer capacities of artificial colour find their fullest manifestations in plastic materials and objects, generating surface effects that reflect, activate, and intensify aesthetic and affective relationalities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Halliday\u2019s \u201cflaming\u201d hot-pink -palette evokes associations with recent queer femme plastic aesthetics that amplify pink\u2019s hyper-saturated femininity to playfully connote artifice. Before the cultural resurgence in pink\u2019s popularity catalyzed by Greta Gerwig\u2019s film Barbie <\/em>(2023), Janelle Mon\u00e1e crystallized this association in her music video \u201cPYNK\u201d (2018), a Black queer femme utopia celebrating lesbian sex with fabulous pink costumes made of velour and other synthetic fabrics. The notoriously essentialist gender signifier is reclaimed in Mon\u00e1e\u2019s pointedly pro-trans \u201cpynk pussy aesthetics,\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - See Krista K. Miranda, \u201cWhen a \u2018Pussy\u2019 Is Not Just a Pussy: Critiquing the U.S. Women\u2019s Marches\u2019 \u2018Pink Pussy Hats\u2019 through Janelle Mon\u00e1e\u2019s \u2018PYNK,\u2019\u201d delivered at the 2019 Performance Studies international conference in Calgary. For more on the Black femme resonances of Monae\u2019s \u201cPynk,\u201d see Omise\u2019eke Natasha Tinsley, The Color Pynk: Black Femme Art for Survival<\/em> (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2022).<\/span>which culminate in her video \u201cMake Me Feel\u201d (2018) with an image of her body sinking into liquid pink plastic, letting its plasticity shape her form as it materializes her queer investment in fluid identity. This image echoes Halliday\u2019s simulation of a liquid pink plastic \u201cskin\u201d covering the body as it emerges from the canvas. Moving from the realm of painterly representation to sculptural form and embodied action, in Halliday\u2019s work pink takes on a life of its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Halliday\u2019s \u201cperformed paintings\u201d hover between static objects and fluid processes, resonating with a queer insistence on disrupting dichotomies of being versus becoming and fixity versus flux. Her performances for the camera crystallize the tension between stasis and fluidity, as a moment from her ephemeral action is frozen in a single photographic frame. Indeed, action is crucial to Chroma\/Moto\/Philia<\/em>. In the title, \u201cchromaphilia\u201d is interrupted by \u201cmoto,\u201d a root word denoting movement. The linguistic performativity of this compound phrase\u2014literally centring movement within a passion for colour\u2014playfully emphasizes the active and kinaesthetic quality of hot-pink\u2019s materiality-in-motion. In other projects, including Performed Abstraction 1\u20134 <\/em>(2015) and In the Skin of a Painting 1\u20133 <\/em>(2015), Halliday moves the work off the wall entirely, choreographing dancers to spatialize vivid colours and shapes. Her photographs and collages capture a dynamism\u2014like electric static sparked by one material encountering another\u2014that reclaims plasticity as a capacity for boundless transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nicole Seymour\u2019s theorization of glitter\u2019s conceptual and material dimensions further illuminates the performativity of queer femme plastic aesthetics. The shimmering material particulates of aluminum metalized polyethylene terephthalate are rivalled only by the colour pink as a signifier of normative femininity. Yet glitter is deeply tied to political histories of LGBTQIA2S+ activism. Seymour proposes that we reclaim glitter\u2019s etymological roots as verb versus noun by defining it as \u201cwhat glitter does<\/em>\u201d (its functionality) rather than by \u201cwhat it is<\/em>\u201d (its materiality). This functionality includes a queer capacity to spark joy and create shared sensory encounters. Glittering<\/em>, Seymour suggests, might take the form of a feeling, a taste, a colour, a sensation, a connection, or a celebration. As such, glitter is not limited to its popular association with petroleum-derived plastics but encompasses a broader aesthetic quality of sparkling and shining.6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Seymour, Glitter<\/em>, 118\u201320, 127.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Glitter\u2019s inherently affective, experiential, and relational style reflects what Chicago-based non-binary Filipinx textile and performance artist Sky Cubacub calls \u201cradical visibility.\u201d7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Sky Cubacub, \u201cRadical Visibility: A QueerCrip Dress Reform Manifesto,\u201d Rebirth Garments (website), October 11, 2024, accessible online.<\/span> For Cubacub, shimmering plastic materials in bold neon hues function as a signifier for beauty as empowerment and accessibility. Their Radical Visibility Collective<\/em> performances (2018\u201319), in collaboration with Vogds and Compton Q, feature bodies of all genders, shapes, sizes, and abilities adorned in dazzling wearable art from Cubacub\u2019s Rebirth Garmentscollection, exemplifying glittering<\/em> in action. The plasticity and performativity of synthetic colour in Cubacub\u2019s work merges the formal properties of 2D visual art with 4D time-based art in multi-sensory haptic encounters. Inspired by queer nightlife, their exuberant live performances blur the lines between fashion show and performance art: a linear runway dissolves into joyful, participatory happenings starring neon orange, yellow, and green, or shimmering pink, blue, purple, silver, and gold. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Vivid, glittering, tactile colour is essential to Cubacub\u2019s gender-fluid aesthetic; their manifesto calls for \u201cfantastically bright colors\u201d with \u201cshiny spandex\/lam\u00e9s and glitter vinyls\u201d that promote \u201cqueercrip radical visibility.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Cubacub, \u201cRadical Visibility.\u201d<\/span> As lyrics by Vogds describe them, the ensemble of queer and -disabled performers are \u201cColor Rangers with kaleidoscope identities\u201d that activate the affective force of a neon colour palette, embodying both Seymour\u2019s theorization of glitter\u2019s conceptual and material force and Lex Morgan Lancaster\u2019s theorization of colour\u2019s vibrant animacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cubacub\u2019s performances perform glittering<\/em>. Extending Seymour\u2019s logic, we could conceive plastic aesthetics beyond the realm of artificial materials toward an array of organic qualities rooted in affect, and consider the inherent performativity of plastic not merely as a material or substance but also as a relational unfolding. Cubacub\u2019s joyful events activate the relational elements of their designs, allowing the models\u2014and the garments\u2014to fully express their kinaesthetic plasticity. Dancing is crucial: music tracks by Vogds and collaborators, such as \u201cChromophilia\u201d (2019), \u201cQueer Crip Power\u201d (2019), and \u201cGlitter\u201d (2018), which feature accessible audio descriptions of each person\u2019s look, vibrate between the performers\u2019 and spectators\u2019 bodies as the event explodes into a collective dance party. Shimmering, glimmering, and shining, plastic surfaces in Cubacub\u2019s artwork materialize the affective energy of queer femme relational aesthetics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe true challenge for life in the Plastocene,\u201d writes art historian Andrea Wolk Rager in her response to the United States Pavilion exhibition Everlasting Plastics <\/em>at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, \u201cis to find our own cultural plasticity, to forge new ways of being in the world.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Andrea Wolk Rager, \u201cArt in the Plastocene Era: Everlasting Plastics at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale,\u201d Collective Arts Network Journal <\/em>12, no. 3 (Fall 2023), \u00adaccessible online.<\/span> Responding to this challenge, Halliday and Cubacub both develop a queer femme plastic aesthetics that reclaims plasticity as a capacity for ethical self-moulding and continuous becoming. Their works embody a kinaesthetic ethics of mutual co-creation between the plastic material and the plastic body\u2014shaping and being shaped through a colourful, glittering, relational reorientation to plasticity and performativity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An assistant professor of theatre and performance at Spelman College, Atlanta, Katie Schaag holds a PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her writing on plasticity, performativity, and queer femme aesthetics is published in Performance Research<\/em>, Edge Effects<\/em>, ASAP\/J<\/em>, Inter Views in Performance Philosophy<\/em>, and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"Tia-Halliday\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Schaag_Tia-Halliday_Sweden_02-scaled.jpg\")
Modern Narrative 1<\/em>, 2015.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Herringer Kiss Gallery, Calgary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nHot-Pink Plastic<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Tia-Halliday\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Schaag_Tia-Halliday_Chroma_01-scaled.jpg\")
Chroma\/Moto\/Philia 1<\/em>, from the series Chromo\/Moto\/Philia<\/em>, 2015. <\/em>
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Herringer Kiss Gallery, Calgary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Tia-Halliday\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Schaag_Tia-HallidaySkin2-scaled.jpg\")
In the Skin of a Painting 3<\/em>, 2016, from the series In the Skin of a Painting<\/em>, 2015-2016.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Herringer Kiss Gallery, Calgary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Tia-Halliday\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Schaag_Tia-Halliday_BlueCompositionII-EXTRA-scaled.jpg\")
Blue Composition II<\/em>, 2016, from the series In the Skin of a Painting<\/em>, 2015-2016.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Herringer Kiss Gallery, Calgary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nGlittering<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"Sky-Cubacub\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Schaag_Sky-Cubacub_MissAlexisLaShaySmith_RVC2-scaled.jpg\")
Winter Collection 2<\/em>, Co-Prosperity, Chicago, 2019.
Model: Miss Alexis La\u2019Shay Smith.
Photo: Colectivo Multipolar, courtesy of the artists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Sky-Cubacub\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Schaag_Sky-Cubacub_Glamhag-scaled.jpg\")
OUT at CHM<\/em>, The Chicago History Museum, Chicago, 2018.
Models: Glamhag, Saki NoSaki
Photos: Colectivo Multipolar, courtesy of the artists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Sky-Cubacub\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Schaag_Sky-Cubacub_SakiNoSaki-scaled.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Sky-Cubacub\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Schaag_Sky-Cubacub_RVC-_LOGO_Vertical.jpg\"){kind=logo}
Winter Collection 2<\/em>, 2019.
Models: (left) Vogds, Sky Cubacub, Compton Q;
(right) C\u2019est Kevvie.
Photos: Colectivo Multipolar, courtesy of the artists<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"Sky-Cubacub\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/113_DO_Schaag_Sky-Cubacub_CestKevvie_RVC2.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n