Martine Gutierrez (b. 1989 Berkeley, CA) produces elaborate narrative scenes that employ pop culture tropes in order to reveal identity as a social construct. Gutierrez has long been interested in creating works that explore the complexity, fluidity and nuances of both personal and collective identity, in terms of race, gender, class, indigeneity and culture.
Working across performance, photography and film, Gutierrez simultaneously acts as subject, artist and muse. She asserts control over her own image by executing each stage of the creative process herself, including staging, lighting, makeup, costuming, modeling and photography.
In this takeover, see select large-scale photographic prints from Indigenous Woman, a 124-page magazine replete with fashion spreads, product advertisements and a Letter from the Editor all dedicated, as Gutierrez describes it, to “the celebration of Mayan Indian heritage, the navigation of contemporary indigeneity and the ever-evolving self-image.” Through the style and construct of the glossy magazine, Gutierrez subverts conventional ideals of beauty to reveal how deeply sexism, racism, transphobia and other biases are embedded in our culture.
