Weight of the World

While there are more women who study to become artists than men, women are more likely to make it into major galleries as subjects than as artists.

 

As women haven’t generally been the people writing history, the work of women artists makes up only a small fraction of what’s taught in art history. 

 

In the workplace infrequent promotion of women to positions of power creates a culture that finds women reportedly seeing their female colleagues more as rivals than as allies. 

 

As a woman and artist, it is my goal to change these statistics. I seek to elevate the women around me instead of viewing them as competition.  

 

In my work, I explore the roles, autonomy and (dis)empowerment of women through the modified configurations of the canvas and frame, liberating the subject from the frame enclosure into the space beyond.

 

By inverting the subject-frame dynamic, these works free both subject and audience from their roles in art as defined by conventional portraiture. This inversion permits both to abandon convention for a newfound autonomy; the subject from confinement, and the viewer from adhesion to established paradigms. 

 

No longer confined by literal and figurative boxing-in, both subject and viewer are invited to consider the roles of women; what is and what could be. Inside of the frame, the subject remains a human-product, commodified and packaged to fit within each scene. Outside of the frame her options become infinite, limited only by what can be imagined.

 

This work asks you as viewer to abandon traditional conceptions about women, and instead to approach life with a deliberate and critical eye. If we look at things another way, it is my hope that we can break away from the status quo and ask whether the barriers we have always known and simply accept exist to imprison, or protect?  

Lucky for us, today you find yourself in a gallery that’s also doing things a little differently. Who Gallery predominantly shows the work of and sells to women!

 

So this year, for International Women’s Day let’s make history.