Ashley Hans Scheirl’s installation “Augapfelkino I” (Eyeball Cinema I) is a reflection on the construction of the gender binary, transgender identity, and multimedia artworks. The sculpture, constructed from self-portraits arranged in kaleidoscopic formations, houses a built-in miniature cinema showing Scheirl’s video “Narziss + Goldarsch: Meine Baustelle 1” (Narcissus + Goldarsch: My Construction Site 1, 2008), a work peppered with sexual innuendos, starring Scheirl in a series of alternating identities.
Scheirl was born Angela Scheirl and, at the age of 40, adopted the name Hans and started taking testosterone in the form of hormone injections. “As a woman, I always suffered from a sense of inferiority. I felt a sexism and noticed that men were treated differently.” [1] On his sixtieth birthday, Scheirl decided to stop taking testosterone and has called himself Ashley Hans ever since. The series “Fotografische Selbstportraits“ (Photographic Self-Portraits, 1974–2012), presented in the vitrine, documents his physical transformations. Both his name and the title of the work itself highlight the significance of language in Scheirl’s works: “Narcissus + Goldarsch” is a tongue-in-cheek tribute to Hermann Hesse’s “Narziß und Goldmund” (Narcissus and Goldmund) from 1930 and a reference to the mythological figure of Narcissus who fell in love with his own reflection and died from unfulfilled longing. For Ashley Hans Scheirl, art is not only “an opportunity to try out identities and things” [2] but a chance to cut through gender roles and gender attributions. (Marijana Schneider)

[1] Ashley Hans Scheirl, quoted from Johanna Hofleitner, “Ashley Hans Scheirl: Hallo, ich bin Ashley!,” in Die Presse, 9 May 2018, https://www.diepresse.com/5403449/ashley-hans-scheirl-hallo-ich-binashley (accessed 24 July 2024).
[2] Ibid.