ANIMIST ACADEMY
Cheddar Gorgeous: Animated Identities

Cheddar Gorgeous (AKA Dr Michael Atkins) is an artist, and academic based at the University of Manchester. They are co-investigator on Creative MiND, a Wellcome Trust-funded project exploring the interior life worlds of people with Motor Neuron Disease. Their work spans anthropology, drag, drawing and applied arts, yet is always centered around how we understand, articulate, and share who we are with one another.

“I am interested in exploring animation and caricature as a metaphor for the way we project our identities to one another. We consciously and subconsciously shape versions of ourselves as part of our everyday lives. We are all artists in the medium of presentation and human connection, although we are often encouraged to hide the lines of our labour, present who we are as a revelation of authenticity. Drag blurs the boundary between the piece of art, the artist and the artistic process. People form a relationship with a version of me that they understand to be authentically inauthentic. I am a living animation.”