Artist's Statement

As heirs to the rights and privileges granted to them by their feminist foremothers and forefathers, adolescents of the “post-post-feminist” generation appear to be misinterpreting these legacies in a contradictory attempt to assert their sexual freedom and equality. Ironically, an exotic dancer can legitimately state that she is a feminist. In choosing to make herself a sexual object for public display, she takes control over her sexuality and asserts her right to do so. Similarly, youth culture legitimizes this point of view and mistakenly accepts permission from the feminist movement to glorify an exaggeration of feminine and masculine sexuality. Yet, this does not necessarily establish gender equality.

Rather, the hypersexual gender performance circulated within the popular culture, as witnessed in the glorified, exaggerated female bodies of music videos and in the risqué profiles posted on online venues such as MySpace, serves to further divide how the sexes relate to one another by reinforcing stereotypical roles. In fact, the digital age in which most youth form personal connections and identities has promulgated these notions and may also serve to perpetuate them.

As a result of this trend, many young women assume gender equality and power are to be found in the projection of a sexualized feminine identity. The logic appears to be that young women can cultivate social and cultural power by willingly transforming themselves into objects of the male gaze. To compensate and to compete, young men are prompted to perform their own equally exaggerated, sexually aggressive, and misogynistic versions of masculinity.

My work presents viewers with motifs of this contemporary phenomenon. I hope to simultaneously revel in the Baroque-like exuberance, and even the innocence, of youth culture sexuality, while creating caution for such excesses and increasing awareness of a new and potentially harmful social dynamic. I want my audience to step back and consider the scenarios I present as being emblematic of a situation that threatens the advancement of gender relations and equality.

My recent work employs Baroque typologies, particularly mythological and allegorical painting and drawing motifs, as visual metaphors for the youthful excess and hedonism that inevitably complicate contemporary gender relations.

By merging the aesthetic and conceptual aspects of Baroque art with contemporary subjects, media, and rendering methods, I aim to highlight the contradictions inherent to contemporary gender performances, those which profess to be provocative and liberating, but nonetheless reveal the antiquated notions of gender and sexuality that consciously and subconsciously inform them.