Martine Gutierrez | ANTI-ICON: APOKALYPSIS

×

Expand

Martine Gutierrez, “Maria,” 2021

Opening Celebration: Thursday, July 11

ANTI-ICON /ænti-ī kän/ 1. the transgressor or antagonist of veneration and obedience; 2. the subversion of a figure or representation widely admired for having great influence or significance in a particular sphere, often regarded as holy and worthy of worship; 3. a representation of both the beginning and the end, prophesied as an omen of rebirth associated with the apocalypse.

APOKALYPSIS / from Greek apokálypsis “revelation,” equivalent to apokalýp(tein) “to uncover, reveal” (apo- “away, off, apart” + kalýptein “to cover, conceal”)

What does it mean to be an icon and who, or what, becomes iconic? Icons carry authority, in their highly symbolic and instant recognisability. The new, landmark series Anti-Icon: Apokalypsis, by acclaimed photographer Martine Gutierrez, refuses ready understandings of identity, gender, and culture. Across seventeen self-portraits, Gutierrez embodies a pantheon of legendary figures – all female or feminized – from across the world’s legends, histories, and myths. Her re-imaginings of such endlessly reproduced figures reference the long visual lineages in which these images circulate – from traditional iconography and Renaissance painting to contemporary fashion editorials and pop media – while offering an interpretation that challenges all these depictions. Through the “anti-icon”, Gutierrez stretches the malleability of the self, and of the social imagination that shapes it.

As Gutierrez states: “In the progress of nihilism, creation becomes resistance; a new image of what the world was all along.”