The work of American photographer and performance artist Martine Gutierrez subverts conventional ideals of beauty to reveal how deeply sexism, racism, transphobia and other biases are embedded in our culture. The exhibition moves from the chaotic and bombastic to the anthropological, including a large-scale wallpaper designed specifically for the exhibition, and Neo-Indian studio portraits incorporating indigenous textiles of Gutierrez’s Mayan heritage.
Playfully, Gutierrez reworks the very conduits of advertising that sell the identities she disassembles. Hybridizing the industry’s objectification of sex with the individual’s pursuit of self, Gutierrez satirically undermines the aesthetics of what we know.
Gutierrez entered the world stage with Indigenous Woman, a 124-page magazine and photographic series with the artist starring as editor, model, stylist, photographer. A full suite of works, as Gutierrez describes, dedicated to “the celebration of Mayan Indian heritage, the navigation of contemporary indigeneity and the ever-evolving self-image.”
