Representations of Gender categorizations: Examining the ways that young people re-curate gender in an urban science art gallery

Citation: Hanckel, Benjamin, and Adam Shepherd. 2023. “Representations of Gender Categorizations: Examining the Ways That Young People Re-Curate Gender in an Urban Science Art Gallery.” Journal of Gender Studies 33 (5): 541–59. doi:10.1080/09589236.2023.2219986.

This paper examines the representations of gender that emerged in one urban site: an exhibition at Science Gallery London that sought to de-centre fixed binary gender categories – a site where gender is explicitly being ‘redone’.

Drawing on research work on curation, the paper examines data (drawings and text) produced by 516 young people who attended the exhibition, exploring the ways gender is narrativised and re-curated within the physical and discursive space(s) of the gallery.

The findings show the ways that gender was felt and represented in these recurations, as fixed and unfixed, and productive and unproductive. The participants reassembled the ideas of gender presented within the gallery through representations imbued with affect. This included representations that conflated sex and gender and privileged bio-essentialist narratives, as well as representations that drew on binary models and logics. These re-curations point to the ways that young people are making sense of gender (im)possibilities. These narratives highlight the ways young people are grappling with discourses of gender as they transition into adulthood in contemporary society.