This exhibit of photographs, from the collection of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar, complements “Legitimizing ‘iel’,” a symposium organized by the Department of French and Francophone Studies on the relationship between language and the trans community, held at Vassar on 6-7 April 2018.

Much like the principal questions posed by the symposium, these nine photographs by artists Mariette Pathy Allen (Vassar class of 1962) and Martine Gutierrez fundamentally question the assumption of gender as a categorical or fixed binary. Each uses a distinct visual language to explore the fluid, performative and possibly non-binary gender identities of their subjects. We draw your attention to the various ways in which both artists comment on the transformative and indeed transgressive possibilities of gender: from the impact of cross-dressing, the intimacy of the couple, the uncanny pairings of humans and mannequins, or the focus on the threshold between different spaces. The artists proffer a vision of a universe in the act of transformation.

Similarly, in the 3-minute video, Clubbing, Gutierrez’s solo performance foregrounds different facets of embodied gender expression.

The following works will be on view at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center in April, 2018.

Martine Gutierrez

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Clubbing, 2012,
Color video with sound, duration: 3:06
Purchase, Advisory Council for Photography
© Martine Gutierrez

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Martine Gutierrez (b. 1989) received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012. The Brooklyn-based performance artist draws from eclectic media, acting as subject, artist, and muse, documenting her personal metamorphosis into various imagined roles.  Interested in the fluidity of relationships and the role of genders within them, she employs mannequins as her counterparts to explore the diverse narratives of intimacy.

Mariette Pathy Allen, Vassar College, class of 1962, has been photographing the transgender community for over 30 years. Her first book Transformations: Crossdressers and Those Who Love Them (1989) was groundbreaking in its investigation of a misunderstood community.  The Gender Frontier (2003), a collection of photographs, interviews, and essays covering political activism, youth, and the range of people that identify as transgender in mainland USA,  won the 2004 Lambda Literary Award in the Transgender/Genderqueer category.  Pathy Allen’s most recent books include, TransCuba (2014) and Transcendents: Spirit Mediums in Burma and Thailand (2017).

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To view other works by these and other artists, please visit the online database for the collection of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.