Audio recording

Against the central indigo wall, three vibrant portraits gaze intensely outward, confronting the traditions of formal portraiture that often situate the feminine subject glancing away from direct eye contact. By breaking the fourth wall, Martine Gutierrez’s portraits create an active participation with their audience.

Within these works, Guitierrez has taken on various imagined roles to confront and explore questions of identity, gender, cultural appropriation, and colonization. In her comprehensive work, Indigenous Woman (2018), Gutierrez creates an entire world of high fashion through documenting her metamorphosis into Mesoamerican and West African deities and fashion icons. Over the span of four years, she served as art director, photographer, and model to culminate a single issue of a 124-page glossy magazine.  Metallic flowers, bright patterned fabrics, intense pink and green backgrounds, pointed, colorful eyes, and ornate jewelry embellish each persona and setting of the portraits.

Each deity presented in Indigenous Woman, many of whom embody male and female characteristics, has a distinct identity depicted in their elaborate hair sculptures, dramatic make-up, and extravagant accessories. In Xochipilli ‘The Flower Prince’, the far most left image, Gutierrez personifies Xochipilli, a benevolent Aztec deity of excess and fertility who was associated with feasting, flowers, pleasure, dancing, painting, hallucinogens, games and artistic creativity. Similarly, Demons, Chin ‘Demon of Lust’ on the far right, showcases Gutierrez as Chin, also known as Chen, a Maya deity of maize, magic, and a counselor to the kings, also associated with the moon. Mainly feminine, Chin is also depicted as masculine and was demonized by the Spanish as being closely associated with homosexuality. Gutierrez, who is Indigenous Maya, drew inspiration from both the beauty of the divine and the ugliness of colonial oppression to create images that question rigid binaries of male/female, sacred/profane, and Indigenous/colonizer.

Acting as a conduit, she supplies a framework—through a gesture, a room, an exchange between characters—that encourages a discourse between the viewer and the work, one that requires the viewer to question his/her/their own perceptions of sex, gender, and social groups. Gutierrez regularly critiques the visual and economic world of high fashion, working to subvert accepted norms through performing as a fashion icon herself. In the center photograph, the model architype is presented in the setting of a fashion shoot seated against a lush, green backdrop in Queer Rage, Imagine Life-Size, and I’m Tyra. Originally featured as a two-page spread in Indigenous Woman, this image was accompanied by a list of all the designers she was wearing, including brands like Versace, Vivienne Westwood, and Prada alongside thrifted items from Goodwill. Examining mainstream appropriation of Indigenous pattern traditions and aesthetics, this image is a critique of major fashion labels that thrust Indigenous culture into clunky mishmash representations without regard for tradition or setting. Fittingly, as Gutierrez composes the rest of the image, she incorporates crudely photoshopped exotic animals, underscoring the artificial nature of the scene. Presented outside of the context of magazine formatting, these three portraits craft a striking visual world and language that entices investigation and reflection.