The Failed Life of a Cowboy

The Failed Life of a Cowboy explores Westernized masculine archetypes in relation to queer identity. Through variations of the cowboy and the farmer, Charlie Mahoney-Volk interrogates the harsh and repressive cultural invention of the cowboy through a genderqueer parody. The series uses self-portraiture as a means of character-building, pulling from contemporary drag performance and reality TV personalities to create comically self-absorbed and raunchy personas. Influenced by their upbringing in Manitoba and their family’s cattle ranch, in each portrait, the cowboy is dressed in a dated theatrical version of the masculine working class and is posed against a stark white studio backdrop to isolate them from any of their expected landscapes. Through the studio setting and queer signalling, the ideal of the classically rugged and stoic cowboy is disrupted.

This public art installation features five portraits in the windows of Zebraclub Vancouver. The Failed Life of a Cowboy plays on the language of editorial fashion and is elevated by its surrounding retail-store setting and neighbourhood, allowing the pieces to potentially be read as promotional content, once again disrupting the viewer’s expectations. The audience is pushed to reinvent their relationship to masculine archetypes through The Failed Life of a Cowboy’s tongue-in-cheek presentation.

Printing sponsored by Signmaster Signs Ltd