Weekly Selfie 3 - Dalenys Drougas

 

Dalenys Drougas, My Mother's Flowers, 2023

Ana Mendieta, Imágen de Yágul, 1973

Female Gaze: Art that Looks at What Women See

• "So is there such a thing as a “female gaze?” Ms. Vischer said that she ultimately concluded that there probably was no single way to define how women artists perceive their subjects. But she did concede: “The female artists’ gaze is shaped by their lived experiences, which are different for women and men.”"

I think I have a hard time pinning down the female gaze because I feel like it simply isn't an inverse of the male gaze but a separate thing as the male gaze can be so consequential. I think this is a good description though that makes sense. I feel like if it was too specific I would feel like it's wrong so the broadness of it gives more room to interpret and be correct.

Ana Mendieta: Artist Who Pushed Boundaries

• "“There’s a way in which her work is about performance,” Catherine Morris, a senior curator for the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the museum, said in a telephone interview. “It’s about theater. It’s about kind of capturing moments through various forms of documentation.

Performance is art, and the way she sets up her Siluetas is a kind of performance for herself but also for us because we can imagine what she had to to to create the works.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing

• "A man’s presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies." “A man’s presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you.”

There are multiple things that can contribute to a man’s presence, like money, social status, morality, etc. So a rich man or a man generally considered to be kind and good would have a higher presence as these men can do more for you, or could get away with doing things to you with a higher chance of getting away with it.

• "But this has been at the cost of a woman’s self being split into two. A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself."

Even if women are unaware of exactly what it is they are usually mostly aware of the feeling of being constantly perceived, and this feeling is usually the male gaze. It can be subconscious too, behaving a certain way without realizing the reason is really the feeling of the male gaze.