‘Unidentified Performing Objects’ interrogates the high-heeled shoe as a culturally constructed symbol of gender, power, and identity. During their V&A Museum Artist-in-Residence, Bosani created a new series of works that reimagines the platform heel as a site of transformation and resistance. Through historical research and studying the museum’s collection, they traced the origins of the heeled shoe to Persian cavalrymen in the 10th century, before it became increasingly associated with femininity in the 18th century. The later adoption of platform heels by men in the 1970s, alongside broader sexual and political revolutions, reveals the shifting and unstable relationship among clothing, gender expression, and social expectations.

For Bosani, the platform heel becomes a gender-fluid object and artistic medium: a structure that destabilises fixed ideas of masculinity and femininity. Using the heel as a starting point, they construct sculptural forms from aluminium, wood, leather, cotton, and hybrid materials, transforming footwear into monumental wearable sculptures. These ‘Unidentified Performing Objects (UPOs)’ exist between categories: garment/sculpture, object/body, performance/identity, inviting new ways of inhabiting and rethinking the self. Activated through performance, the ‘UPOs’ become tools of embodiment and transformation, challenging normative constructions of gender and offering alternative visions of identity and masculinity beyond dominance and restriction. Through these works, Bosani continues their exploration of fluid identities, queerness, and the power of objects to unlock new forms of expression, representation, and belonging.

Unidentified Performing Objects is the closing performance of Bosani’s residency at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Funded by Adobe Foundation and produced by the V&A Friday Late and V&A Residency teams.