“Watch Me” is an invitation for the viewer to participate in a woman’s perception of herself. In this group exhibition the three artists, Tiffany Adler, Elizabeth Wood, and Victoria Majesta Marquez embrace themselves as they become both the muses and creators of their individual processes. Throughout this collection of sculptures, paintings, and photographic prints, “Watch Me” champions contemporary narratives of the female gaze and reconsiders archetypes of beauty.
Adler employs her own body as sculpture, imagery, and performance in her artwork and in turn, becomes a vehicle for celebrating the countless positions women hold through their autonomy. Wood melds women and earth as one, juxtaposing mother nature and her own body to illustrate their resilience and inextricability from existence. Marquez’s ceramics mimic the rawness of human flesh, her corporeal vessels redefining and investigating the ideology of an “undesirable” body. Fingerprints in clay serve as reminders of a loving touch, reenvisioning the female form as able to simply “be” rather than fit into any standard, construct, or definition.
The collective works nod to constructs that have historically plagued the female experience––their lives and bodies subjected to desperate, fear-driven grabs for control and other forms of oppression. Via material and concept, each artist actively works to address the point of contention between how they are seen and how they see themselves, making their own processes and experiences inseparable from their artwork. And while the current political climate attempts to drag women’s rights backward, the artists in this exhibition reclaim their representation and punctuate what it is to be unabashedly woman.
