Eduardo Blidner: Argentine Drag Queens

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• Eduardo Blidner

Argentine photographer Eduardo Blidner is no stranger to Minneapolis's Icebox Gallery. In 2000 the gallery hosted Blidner's first solo show, which launched his series "Tango Argentino" around the world. Last year Icebox was the first gallery in the world to host Blidner's globetrotting exhibition "City Vs. City." Now the Leica-wielding artist returns to Icebox with "Argentine Drag Queens," a show of exactly what the title suggests. Blidner created intimate black-and-white and sepia-toned portraits of his homeland's cross-dressers in an effort to understand their place in the conservative South American country's society, and in the world at large. Like all good portrait subjects, the drag queens in the images retain a bit of mystery and ambiguity about who they are beyond a face printed on a page. Blidner recognizes this duality of drag queens posing for portraits straightforwardly while never revealing their true selves. "A drag queen is a total lie, and thereby becomes an immediate truth; a grand choice when faced with the half-truths that characterize our epoch," he writes about his show. "In this transposition of ideas, kindness is annoying, goodness creates problems, and, in the end, agrees to co-exist peacefully with evil." Opening reception 8 p.m. to midnight Friday, November 7.
Nov. 7-Jan. 7, 2008