Josef Rabara – I Got the Smile of Women in My Face

9. 5. 2018

Josef Rabara, project Mušnula, 2012

Josef 'Jožo' Rabara is a lot of things – a photographer, music producer, and a host on the radio. Certain aspects of his art can be found in the wider context of his other activities. In his work, we can see, for example, a link between using the body as the primary tool for performative actions and his current profession of a yoga coach. Similarly, he deals with queer issues and themes not only in his art, but also as a host in the Kvér show on Radio Wave.

Josef Rabara graduated from the Department of Photography under Professor Pavel Baňka at the Faculty of Art and Design in Ústí nad Labem. He started to work with the body as the main theme of his photographs in the Žena a život (The Woman and Her Life) (2008) and Oh England (2009) series, created during his study stay in England. Another example of his early work is the photographic series Maty & Dany (2010) where he deals with trans identity, later as a diploma thesis he materialized the Mušnula project (2012).

But an important, common theme of Rabara’s work has always been the body, whether his own, the bodies of other people, or a notional social body trying to break free from the rigid male/female binarity. This principle is the basis for many gender stereotypes as well as the assumption that heterosexuality is the default sexuality, often still the only one accepted by the majority. In 2015, Rabara had a joint exhibition with Karol Radziszewski in the Fotograf gallery entitled Tomorrow Will Be Different. The exhibition title was based on a quote from the journal of Stanislav Z. who was the centre of Rabara’s installation. Stanislav had kept a diary since the mid-1940s to understand his desire for other men, which he saw as a deviation, hoping he could be cured. The journal pages are full of snapshots of athletes and voyeuristic images of men taken by Stanislav in public, showing the then strictly forbidden, but irrepressible homoerotic desire. The journal shows the power of photography as a medium that helped Stanislav perceive his own sexuality and difference. On the other hand, one has to know the context – the close-ups of male crotches seem almost funny today, however painful their history. To emphasize the sense of the "forbidden fruit", Rabara built a darkroom for the installation, evoking night clubs as places of prohibited sexual relations. In the hiding and spewing of homoerotic desires, he brought together two separated things – Stanislav’s photographs and today’s darkrooms.

In a very different project, Mušnula, Rabara uses his own body to undermine the gender roles clearly defined by society. The Czech title of this musical and performative project plays with the male and/or gender identity (Mušnula combines the misspelt Czech word "muž" [man] and "nula"[zero or loser]). In the project, Rabara goes back to his childhood in the 1980s, when he was a small boy from Košice, Slovakia, who took part in a talent competition dressed up as Madonna. As he says, it was the first transvestite show in Košice, long before the Czechoslovak population became aware of the term. Rabara decided to repeat this moment at the end of his studies in Ústí nad Labem, but on a larger scale – with his own music production and video clips for each song. One of the first songs in the project was Skúška prvých šiat (Trying on the First Dress) by Slovak singer Marika Gombitová, which caused unexpected attention from various parts of the Slovak society.

At present, Rabara presents himself mainly as Mušnula. It does not mean, however, that he is starting a career in music – the performative part strongly prevails over the music element in the performances of his music band, which helps him break down the gender stereotypes and to be genderfucked like a ton of bricks.

Text | Natálie Drtinová

IMAGES CAPTIONS

1 | Josef Rabara, project Mušnula, 2012
2–5 | Tomorrow Will Be Different, photography and photo collage, 2015
6–7 | Skúška prvých šiat (Trying on the First Dress), project Mušnula, video clip 3:34 minutes, 2012
8 | from the series Maty & Dany, 2010
9 | from the family archive of Josef Rabara

Natálie Drtinová

Natálie Drtinová is an art theorist focusing on the intersection of art and social issues. She works in curating, writing, and research. She is currently a PhD student at Charles University’s Faculty of Arts and manages the estate of Anna Zemánková.

#31 body

The image of the body can take many forms reflecting the never-ending human desire to create the imprints of ourselves. The theme of the body and corporeality has appeared in photography since the very beginning. But it does not include only the classic and much-repeated nude, already exhausted in its commercial and common academic forms. The body itself is the mortal frame of the human being and its physical existence, whose uniqueness and evanescence we are aware of although we often try to forget about it. The body is born, and it grows, matures and becomes an object or the initiator of amorous passion: the female body produces children, and the male body is involved in a sexual act. Then the human body gets older, gradually wastes away, experiences diseases and bodily injuries, and eventually ceases to exist like everything else in the cycle of time. Photography and photographers have a unique chance to capture or interpret all these phases. Plato’s conception of corporeality gave rise to the dichotomy of the “body” and “soul”. Once we identify them in our being, we can see the body as a primary form of life that fundamentally determines our being in the world and expresses who we really are. It would be interesting if our physical experience was given the same, if not higher, value like our thinking. The representation of the body is the representation of strength and weakness, and the associated social and cultural codes, including sexuality and gender types. In this magazine issue, we focus on author and photographic projects presenting the human body and nudity sometimes as an object, sometimes as a means to stimulate the viewer’s critical reflections on the current political, cultural, sexual, gender, and socio-economic issues.