Sturtevant was a visual artist, who was based for the longest part of her career in New York. In the 1960s Elaine Sturtevant began operating an art practice in which she meticulously copied selected works of her male colleagues. Her practice was a critique of the culture of the art world in which she was working, one that was dominated by the concept of the lone genius, autonomous, white male creator. From the beginning she dropped her first name to subvert the concept of the identity of a female artist. In Hainley’s study he recalls the early performances by Sturtevant including The Store of Claes Oldenburg, Picabias’ Ballet Relache and the ambiguous reception of her work at the time.

Testo Junkie – Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era – published 2007 in Spanish and French, translated into English in 2013, is an uncompromised document of the nearly year-long self experiment with synthetic testosterones and its lasting effects. The writer and philosopher Paul B. Preciado shares the intimate radical shifts he undergoes while becoming ‘man / male’ and juxtaposes this document of his political performance with an analyses of how concepts of gender in society are shaped by the pharmaceutical and pornography industries. Preciado continues where Michel Foucault left with The History of Sexuality.