My Work
Desert Portrait
In Iris Marion Young’s On Female Body Experience, Young cites a study by Erik Erikson in which young children were asked to build a scene for an imaginary movie using toys. The outcome was that boys generally created outdoor settings, and girls indoor. Boys’ spaces were outwardly directed, while girls’ were inwardly directed. While Erikson believed this to be a result of girls projecting “the enclosed space of their wombs and vaginas, [and boys projecting] the phallus”, I do not buy this idea (Young 40). I believe that boys projected “outward space” as a result of being allowed and encouraged to take up space and speak their minds. Girls are typically not awarded this same encouragement. Young explains, “feminine existence appears to posit an existential enclosure between herself and the space surrounding her” because “woman’s social existence [is characterized by being] the object of the gaze of another, which is a major source of her bodily self-reference” (Young 40, 39). Girls are taught very early on that their bodies do not belong to them. They are aware that they are always being watched, being seen, being objectified. They are taught that their worth lies in their beauty. This greatly affects bodily existence.
Desert Portrait is a reflection of this. In order to play on ideas of both indoor and outdoor space, these images are shot in the desert but include a mirror as a signifier for the ways a woman’s body is constantly viewed by others as well as herself. The blood used to draw a smile across my face is both symbolic as violence against women, as well as lipstick. Makeup is cited as a reason for sexual assault, as if makeup somehow means the victim was “asking for it”. In this piece, I am occupying outdoor space, drawing parallels between the female body and the desert. There is a long history of women artists creating work in the desert, as the female body and desert are both spaces of cosmic energy and magic. I wanted to continue this tradition, choosing the Mojave Desert on the border of Nevada and California, my two homes. I watch myself paint a bloody smile across my face, but the camera is positioned behind me so the perspective is that of a viewer. The viewer is implicated as an observer of my body to outline the ways in which women are perpetually stared at and desired, their personhood ignored.
Artist inspirations for this piece are Ana Mendieta, specifically Mirage, and Laura Aguilar’s self portraiture. Both these artists position themselves as parts of the landscape, painting the female body as natural and beautiful, but as an autonomous subject as opposed to a passive object. Their work stands in strong opposition to images of women created by and for male pleasure. Mendieta and Aguilar do not attempt to edit or alter their appearances for viewing amusement. Their bodies are their own, are powerful and strong, and are depicted on their own terms.
Spit Portrait
Spit Portrait is a reference to action painting, specifically inspired by Marilyn Minter’s Green Pink Caviar and Hans Namuth’s Pollock film. Jackson Pollock was hailed as “The Greatest American Painter” when he was alive, known for his drip and splatter paintings. I wanted to play on this idea, subverting such a heavily male dominated art movement. Instead of throwing, pouring, and splattering, I spit onto the plexiglass and layer different images atop one another to create a collaged image.
I am interested in ideas of “feminine markmaking”- the traces that can be made with the female body and its interior- as these acts have not been appreciated and celebrated in the way that art made by male bodies has. I spit to reject standards, stereotypes, and in this case the celebration of yet another white male voice deemed brilliant due to hypermasculinity. Prioritization and preference of masculine qualities has resulted in viewing feminine qualities as weak and unworthy. Pollock’s alcoholism and subsequent abuse of his wife Lee Krasner is not an isolated problem; the art canon is full of problematic, violent men whose crimes and abuse are completely ignored. These crimes are even justified by many because they are viewed as “geniuses”. This cycle of silencing and abuse must end.
Subverting the Cube
In this work, I created a 4 x 4 white cube as my performance space. I then used a staple gun to anchor white roses to all sides of the cube, including the floor and ceiling. I then drink and spit red dye all over the walls and roses. The color and type of flowers is significant; white is a metaphor for purity, and roses are symbolic of beauty and love. I think of them as a signifier of beauty standards. White roses are also funeral flowers. This cube serves as a reference to both minimalism and the traditional art gallery. Both these spaces are male dominated. By inserting myself into this space, I am becoming part of this history.
The “white cube” gallery model developed in the early twentieth century in order to create an art exhibition space with as little distraction as possible. However, this modernist idea also added another level of elitism. Artwork displayed in the white cube immediately becomes elevated, almost sacred. Galleries are also notoriously male dominated spaces, according to a 2015 estimate by Gallery Tally project, started by Micol Hebron, only about 30% of artists represented by commercial galleries are women. This directly affects artists’ sales, as galleries show and sell an artist’s works, allowing the artists to focus on their studio practice. According to ArtNews:
“At auction, the highest price paid to date for a work by a living woman artist is $7.1 million, for a Yayoi Kusama painting; the highest result for a living man was an editioned sculpture by Jeff Koons, which sold for $58.4 million. The most ever paid for a work by a deceased woman artist is $44.4 million for a Georgia O’Keeffe painting, versus $142.4 million for a Francis Bacon triptych. (One of the many reasons for the almost $100 million difference was articulated by O’Keeffe herself, ‘The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I’m one of the best painters’)”.
Minimalism is characterized by sleek, geometric shapes intended to represent “truth and order” (Tate). Minimalist work is often sculpture or installation work, intended to appear neutral. One of the most well-known minimalist artists, Carl Andre, claims his minimalist sculptures are “carefully arranged to emphasize and reveal the architecture of the gallery… encouraging viewers to be conscious of the space” (Tate). Essentially, Andre places squares and rectangles on the floor of a square gallery. The continued exhibition and celebration of Andre’s work after the murder of Ana Mendieta is a reminder that men can commit terrible atrocities against women and still go on with their lives. His work exists in stark contrast to hers, sitting on the floor of white cubes, claiming to be “neutral” and “impersonal”. With my work Untitled, I think about the way Mendieta exited the art space to create much of her work, in order to explore her own body, land, and raise consciousness about violence against women. Her works evoke ideas of ritual and death.
The cube form is a direct signifier for art world sexism. I am literally spitting on this notion. The red liquid is once again a representation of violence against women, but also a means by which I am staining both the white cube and white roses. I positioned my body in this piece to reference pageant images, a culturally recognizable symbol of beauty. In Subverting the Cube, typical notions of art and beauty, both of which represent different ways of oppressing women, are questioned and destroyed.
Blood Portrait is a collage of “paintings” on my body. After freezing ice cubes made from red dye, I placed the ice on different parts of my body, creating patterns as they melted and dripped. I then photographed these patterns extremely close up, and cropped and collaged the images to create an abstracted and fragmented portrayal of the body. The color of the dye clearly connotes blood, again serving as representation of violence against women.
Historical portrayals of the female body follow a specific model: nude, full body, displayed in such a way that is meant to be pleasurable to viewers. Blood Portrait rejects this portrayal, instead confusing the viewer’s eye and sense of the body. Although it is a representation of a female body, it offers no pleasure, even becoming gross and abject to further iterate the idea that women do not exist for objectification and male gratification.