Writer Jennifer Bloomer, in addressing gender and space, repeatedly delves into Deleuze and Guattari's notion of "minor literature." Bloomer states: "Minor literature is that writing which takes on the conventions of a major language and subverts it from the inside."* This practice plays out in glances, inferences, reversals, rewritten structures, unintended meetings or meanings -- another way to name this might be something akin to generating a space with yourself.

Malic Amalya's recent films and videos speak in this language: in the film grain that exposed the grit of the narrative, the repetition of a name as it looses its meaning and referent, and the camera's capture of a leak of light that sends an electric flash of attraction into the viewer. The works look out onto spaces where clean-cut identity has not been assigned.

Amalya has said, "I will light stuff based on what I'm seeing." What he sees is the performative structure of girlhood, the queerness of space, the trajectories of a relationship in dissolve. This is materiality of identity, a physical and hands-on psychological spacing of the question, "how do you know yourself?"

Anthony Elms (2008)

*(Bloomer, Jennifer, "D'Or," in Beatriz Colomina, editor, Sexuality and Space, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY, 1992, pp. 178-179.)