Chimera Collaboration (Vanessa Godden + Melissa Tran)
Chimera Collaboration is comprised of artists Melissa Tran and Vanessa Godden. Ideals of femme and racicalised identities imposed on them from each of their contrasting multiracial identities are the catalyst for their collective endeavours. Their collaborative process explores themes of racial ambiguity and hyper-sexualization through the use of blending, disconnecting, and reflection. Chimera Collaboration manipulates and exaggerates ablutions, adornments, and dinging practices to exploit domestic landscapes into unfamiliar settings through a series of performative photographs and videos. Utilising the physicality of their bodies with materials such as colour swatches, latex paint, foundation makeup, manipulated photographs, white sheeting, nylon tights, pomegranates, and ice cream, Tran and Godden address the divergent constitution of their cultural, gender, and sexual identities in a society fixated on the body's capacity to be consumed through reductive methods of perception.