f With Masquerading Against Gender Binarisms

The text discusses the Berlin-based artist Bridge Markland’s transgender performance entitled bridgeland zwei (1996). It is one of the most thought-out and one of the artistically most refined contemporary drag king/queen performances. With an exceptionally perfected cross-dressing, the performer transcended the gender binarism of the established concepts of masculinity and femininity. She first put on the mask of femininity, and then changed into a male protagonist. In the middle part of the staging and at the very end, she appeared as an androgynous being. It is shown how, with the help of exaggerations, strong parody, irony and even grotesqueness, the performer’s carnival body dressed up in the clothes and accessories characteristic of a precisely determined gender tried to overcome the rigid conventions of social heteronormativity.