Marina Paulenka in conversation with Martine Gutierrez

Join FORMAT21 guest curator Marina Paulenka as she talks to artist, performer, and musician Martine Gutierrez about her practice. Gutierrez features in the exhibition Matrix — fluid bodies, unlimited thoughts alongside Tabita Rezaire and Juliana Huxtable.

Martine Gutierrez explores gender, sexuality, race and class, as well as conventional ideals of beauty and identity. Acting as subject and producer, the artist creates photographs, music, billboard campaigns, films, performances, and satirical ads that juxtapose the consumable with the genuine. Interested in the ambiguous fluidity of relationships and the role of genders, her video works combine costume, photography and film. Gutierrez produces complex narrative scenes that use the symbolism of pop culture to reveal (gender) identity as a social construct.

Gutierrez accompanies each film, which documents her transformative performance, with her own original music. While in her never-before-shown film work Hear she sings “I’m alone, I don’t need your love anymore …”, while she walks alone on a beautiful sunny day watching people sitting in the grass and exchanging love, touches and kisses. Recorded almost in a guerrilla style in Chile on Valentine’s Day, the film exposes the variety of love in different types of relationships.

Gutierrez produced Indigenous Woman, an artist book in a popular glossy magazine format focussed on the subversion of white, western standards of beauty. Filled with beauty ads, fashion spreads and a letter from the editor—all featuring Gutierrez herself as model, stylist, photographer, writer, and editor. Some works parody fetishised representations of ethnic identity, while the Body En Thrall series consists of large black and white prints in which Gutierrez appears surrounded by mannequins, which have fascinated her since high school. In her recent body of work, China Doll, Gutierrez once again plays the titular role which is the mirror, a counterpart to Indigenous Woman – she is a blonde woman now, an avatar, the epitome of femininity and the product of Hollywood’s highest ideals. [7]

[7]https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/the-artist-martine-gutierrez-goes-blond

This talk will take place via zoom. The link to join will be sent to all registered attendees before the event. The event will also be live streamed to the FORMAT Facebook Page.

FORMAT21 will run from 12 March - 11 April 2021

Head to our website to find out about our other events, performances, artist talks, workshops and more.

www.formatfestival.com