Transcending the Ideal: Reimagining Femininity and its Relationship to Power
Curated by Virginia Ingram
Artists: Svetlana Bailey, NARCISSISTER, Ryan Trecartin, Elzie WIlliams III, Qinru Zhang, and Annie Chen Ziyao
April 13 – 27, 2023
This exhibition explores self-perception at the intersection of the media and technology, uncovering how social networks, image saturation, and social stereotypes influence ideals of femininity, modes of self-representation, and the categorization of bodies. The artists in the exhibition identify various mirrors in contemporary culture, such as selfies, social media influencers, video game avatars, exclusive social organizations, pornography, targeted magazine advertisements, and algorithms, to illuminate how the reflections and representations of identity in the mediascape can affect self-perception, and to challenge the systemic limitations of self-imaging that shape dominant ideologies related to race, class, and gender.
The included works engage with technology, visual media, and the body to uncover how structures of control and privilege underwrite feminine identity and agency. Svetlana Bailey’s series Who wants to live forever? (2022) addresses the idea of body replication to consider the boundaries of physicality and the process of aging. Elzie Williams III’s work Quick Response (Portrait I) (2023) presents a collage of found QR codes drawn from magazines and newspapers to illuminate the increased accessibility of consumption, especially in the post-pandemic digital milieu, where beauty social scanning is always a click away. Narcisisster’s Untitled Upper Jay, NY Collage Series (Grey hair) (2022), Untitled Kingstone, NY Collage Series (Fan) (2021), Untitled Kingstone, NY Collage Series (Pink Socks) (2021), and Untitled Kingstone, NY Collage Series (Broach) (2021) reveal a collation of images portraying sexualized bodies derived from pornography, magazines, and art catalogs, fragmenting the stereotypical depiction of female representation to challenge the audience’s enjoyment and titillation. Qinru Zhang’s digital work Momomomorri (2022) critiques the problematic tropes of fetishized aesthetics of stereotypical anime women, while Annie Chen Ziyao’s sassy alter-ego and internet personality Ms. Meta Meta (2022) engages in satirical tutorials to delineate how the internet propels a specific embodiment of beauty that aligns with Western standards. Lastly, Ryan Trecartin’s film CENTER JENNY (2013) projects a fragmented reality where sameness is celebrated, pointedly critiquing the mainstream social behaviors that centralize success and desirability around a basic, homogenized female identity.
In the contemporary digital era, the increased presence of mirrors and the proliferation of images, products, and services have fostered an overwhelming hypervisibility and hypercriticality of the self. By understanding how social structures are constructed and reinforced on and offline, this exhibition explores the ways that cis-gender, female-identifying bodies are produced, disseminated, and consumed within the current mediascape and proposes novel methods of challenging preconceived narratives of femininity.