You can always tell when a photo or painting of a woman was done by a male artist. Often there’s an overemphasis on her breasts and the other curves of her body, or she is miraculously free of wrinkles, and the imperfections that make her human.
That isn’t the case at Playground Detroit’s Female Gaze exhibit, curated by gallery-owner Paulina Petkoski for Women’s History Month. All of the pieces in the show were made by women to show different aspects of femininity — soft, hard, strong, abstract, and at times traumatized by a life programmed by the wishes of men.
Immediately I’m spellbound by Andrea Del Rio’s “Que Quieres” painting, showing the feminine urge to sit naked in their room, face painted for the gods, swept in ecstasy by self pleasure, in a space created for softness, play, laughter, and girlhood.
My fascination with the painting is not because of the full frontal nudity, but because it has a familiar feeling that brings me joy. It reminds me of the days when I just want to get high, order takeout, and enjoy existing, naked and free, looking at myself in the mirror knowing I’m a bad bitch and no one can tell me nothing, because no one can make me feel as good as myself.
“With all the things that are happening politically in the world right now that are driven by men, I just wanted to have a space that celebrates women and have men experience what this feels like as the opposite of the default that we experience every day,” Petkoski says. “This is a woman-owned gallery and I have the space to empower and center women.”
Female Gaze features paintings, sculpture, photography, figurative and abstract work by more than 30 women and opened Saturday, March 22.
All the archetypes of womanhood are here — the maiden, mother, and crone. While Del Rio’s bubbly pink painting of a young woman chilling in her room while the floor is scattered with unicorn slippers and a dildo, Zoe Beaudry paints a portrait of her mother with wild eyebrows and silver hair as the sagely crone. Jade Lilly’s photography gives women the goddess treatment, as always.
Then Shaina Kasztelan takes found objects and molds them into nightmarish pieces where Disney princess blankets erode into a horror movie of demonic unicorns and ejaculating penises. Don’t miss her reproductive propaganda piece in the kitchen toward the back of the gallery, with its factory line of Barbies and plastic babies.
The only two artists to depict men in the show are Bre’Ann White and Ijania Cortez. White’s photography is known for giving Black men a softness they are not always afforded. Her series of silhouettes in this show give her male subjects a divine feminine quality — mysterious, empowered, and subtly flowing like water. Cortez’s painting, titled, “Here’s Looking At You!” shows a man with a durag looking at the viewer with a smirk.
“My work is masculinity examined from the female gaze. It is a view of strength through a lens that considers vulnerability, intimacy and softness in figures that aren’t easily afforded such graces,” Cortez says. “The balance between my vantage point and the brashness of the figure gives room for the portraits to be pained in a fullness that gives life to my subjects.”
When women are perceived through the male gaze, our “femininity” becomes contingent on perceptions that dehumanize us. Should I wear a bra just because it will make my breasts look more appealing by beauty standards created by men? Should I be ashamed to enjoy sex and self pleasure? Is femininity defined by how “perfect” my body looks and is my worth regulated to my ability to reproduce?
Female Gaze says a resounding “hell no.”
Female Gaze is on view at Playground Detroit, 2845 Gratiot Ave., Detroit; shop.playgrounddetroit.com. Show runs through April 19.
This review was published in partnership with Detroit Metro Times.
