Object number2016.21.1.6
Girl Friends (Anita & Marie 6)
Portfolio/Seriesfrom the series Girl Friends
Date2014
Artist
Martine Gutierrez
(American, born 1989)
CultureAmerican
MediumInkjet print on Arches Baryta paper, mounted to Sintra
EditionOne from an edition of 8
DimensionsImage: 9 x 13 1/2 in. (22.9 x 34.3 cm)
Sheet: 9 3/4 x 14 1/4 in. (24.8 x 36.2 cm)
Sheet: 9 3/4 x 14 1/4 in. (24.8 x 36.2 cm)
Credit LinePurchase, Advisory Council for Photography
On View
Not on viewPeriod21st c
Classification(s)
InscribedOn the reverse of the mount, by unidentified hand, lower right edge in pencil: 2016.21.1.6
BibliographySheets, Hilarie M. “She’s a Shape-Shifting Artist Who Plays All the Parts.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 2021. ProvenancePurchased from Ryan Lee GalleryVassar Exhibitions
Exhibition HistoryMartín Gutierrez: Can She Hear You, Ryan Lee Gallery, New York, New York, April 9 - May 9, 2015; What Now? (Or Not Yet), Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, January 21 - September 10, 2023
Label TextOver the last fifty years, artists have established a strong tradition of critiquing our inherent and often unearned trust in photographs as windows onto reality. Associated with the so-called Pictures Generation, Cindy Sherman created iconic photographs in the 1970s in which she staged scenes for the camera and inhabited unexplained, fictional personas in her photographs. Her work highlights how every photograph is constructed, to some extent, by taking this to an extreme. Martine Gutierrez extends this tradition in her series Girl Friends, also acting as her own model, alongside a mannequin, and performing queer romance for the camera in black-and-white images that mimic the aesthetic of a black-and-white film still. Both Sherman and Gutierrez use mannequins, makeup, costumes, props, and the tricks of photography to create ambiguous images that complicate what it means to make a portrait. For Gutierrez, the blurriness of real vs fake, self vs other, performance vs authenticity is a means of exploring the complexity of her own identity as an Indigenous and trans woman.
DescriptionFlush-mounted to Sintra. Black and white image of a female mannequin laying down with a woman partially sitting up in the background. Both are obscured by white netting.Terms
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