Our Bodies / Ourselves

Ghislaine Fremaux & Lando Valdez F,or,ever, 2019 Pastel drawing on collaged paper b. 1986, Washington, DC; Lives/Works: Lubbock, TX; Photo courtesy of the Artist

Adelia Wise Maternal Condition, 2018 Charcoal on Paper; b. 1988, Ann Arbor, MI; Lives/Works: Wichita, KS; Photo courtesy of the Artist

Lily Guillen; El Acto de Purgar (2), 2019 Mixed media on Canvas; b. 1995, Morelia, Mexico; Lives/Works: Wichita, KS; Photo courtesy of the Artist

If you were in New York City in 1989, you may have been lucky enough at one point to see a bright yellow ad on the side of a bus, featuring a reclining nude woman, back turned toward the viewer, and wearing a large gorilla mask on her head. The ad asks the viewer to consider one simple question: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?”

The poster was created by the feminist collective Guerrilla Girls. The nude in the image is from the painting Le Grande Odalisque, 1814, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (in the collection of the Louvre Museum since 1899). Reclining nudes have a long tradition in art. The images of Venus from the Renaissance transformed and gained popularity in the 19th Century with the depiction of the “odalisque,” traditionally a slave in a Turkish harem, and Manet’s Olympia from 1863. We can visit any major museum and find a variety of nude female images, but the Guerrilla Girls wanted to know where the female artists were. Their bus poster continues to assert that while less than 5% of the artists featured in the Met galleries were women, 85% of the nudes were female. Why is there such a discrepancy between woman as object and woman as artist?

In her groundbreaking 1971 essay, historian and critic Linda Nochlin asks another question: “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Although this question appears to have a simple answer (of course there have been great women artists! they’ve just been overlooked! here is a list of names!) Nochlin insists the answer is more complicated. Her essay goes on to point out that the social structures that allowed men to rise to the ranks of a “great” artist also systematically exclude women from participation. She uses as an example the system of the Royal Academy, where the study of the male nude was the epitome of artistic development, yet women were banned from life drawing courses. Nochlin continues to point out that the women who have gone on to produce a large body of work often have the benefit of either being the daughter of a successful artists or married to one, and while the pursuit of drawing may be admired in a young woman, once she is married it is expected that her focus is on raising children and artistic interests are no longer encouraged. Griselda Pollock, writing in 1988, continues to build on Nochlin’s arguments, focusing on the Impressionists and the modern city. Again, women artists are relegated to the arena of domesticity, while their male counterparts are able to freely explore the city alone, particularly in the role of the Flanuer. Pollock also dives into the male gaze, the theory developed by Laura Mulvey in 1975, declaring that the assumed consumer of visual culture is a masculine, heterosexual viewpoint. Not only were women the objects of art created for this gaze (like the many Odalisques and Manet’s Olympia) but women are also subjected to this type of looking and observing at all times. Pollock uses Mary Cassatt’s At the Opera, 1879, as an example: the woman in the foreground is intently watching the show, while in the background a man leans over the edge of the balcony to observe her. The reclining nudes were created for this gaze, their sexuality only hinted at through the image of the venus, then becoming blatant in the image of Olympia, a prostitute, her image and her body existing to be consumed.

The Guerrilla Girls formed in 1984, part of the developing field of feminist art history and theory, to highlight the ways in which women are systematically excluded from participation in the art world. They are still operating today; traveling, speaking, exhibiting, and creating new work. In 2019 the New York Times published a feature title “Can a Woman who is an Artist ever just be an Artist?” It follows the stories of two successful painters, Celia Paul and Cecily Brown, still struggling with the questions of what it means to be a woman and an artist, still concerned that traditional roles of femininity and motherhood will diminish their artistic relevance, still being viewed only as muse for a “great” male artist, still grappling with sexualized power structures and the male gaze. It was only this last year that the New York MoMA reopened its expanded galleries to showcase a new interpretation of their permanent collections, being more inclusive of gender and ethnicity, and prompting an outpouring of both praise and criticism, either too radical or not radical enough. It seems the questions posed now forty to fifty years ago are still relevant.

As juror Ksenya Gurshtein points out in her essay for the Biennial, it is important to note that many of the pieces featured in the Our Bodies, Ourselves gallery are created by women, “for whom the process of shaking off various patriarchal expectations and fully discovering their bodies and emotionally complicated selves on their own terms remains unfinished and urgent business.”

Juror’s award winner Ghislaine Fremaux confronts the viewer with the body. Presented in a grand scale, the flesh is tactile, and the weight of the body is palpable. The image is expertly rendered by the artist's hand, then abstracted through a process of tearing and layering pieces back together, creating a feeling of movement from both the artist and the model. In her statement Fremaux discusses the idea of radical consent. In opposed to the male gaze, which does not require consent from the object, Fremaux’s work is developed in collaboration with her models. While the finished work is overtly sexual, the model and artist remain in control of what is seen and how it is presented. These bodies exist for their own pleasure.

Adelia Wise also offers us three more massive pieces, focusing on the artist’s own experience with maternity and birthing twins. The image of the artist’s naked, and very pregnant, torso again works to negate the idealized female form. In its scale and presentation the image is aggressive, reminding the viewer that this is also how women’s bodies exist. Giant babies fill the piece aptly titled “The Big Picture”, creating a physical representation of the mental and emotional weight of giving birth. Gurshtein also points out in her commentary on Wise’s work that the art historical cannon is lacking in representations of maternity.

Without an image of the body in her work Monika Maddux creates a visceral representation of her own experience with miscarriage. Her installation pieces represent bodily processes that, although experienced by many women, are not often publicly discussed. Maddux, like Adelia, offers the viewer very personal work about the struggles of maternity. In this case the absence of. Her delicate embroidery on the velvet blood puddle in “Where it Hurts” embodies a mixture of grief and longing. In a culture that emphasizes the reproductive and domestic role of women, what happens when something goes wrong, when we can’t (or won’t) fulfill that role?

Lily Guillen’s work explores women’s bodies as sites of violence, often perpetuated by men, and condoned by various institutions. Guillen focuses on the church’s role in cultivating the ideal of patriarchal, or machista, ideals and how that has affected herself and her family. Her images are comprised of the female body, photographed, then torn apart and stitched back together, as a way for Guillen to process the violence she has experienced. This practice continues to do the work that the previous artists have explored; ways that women can reclaim the body to control representation and work through trauma.

-Gretchen Boyum, Interim Curator, Salina Art Center