The Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago (MoCP) presents Martine Gutierrez, from June 3 – August 29, 2021. This exhibition features work from Gutierrez’s independent art publication, Indigenous Woman (2018), a 124-page glossy magazine exploring how deeply sexism, colorism, racism, transphobia, and other biases are embedded and ubiquitous in popular culture and fashion photography.

This exhibition is organized by Asha Iman Veal, MoCP curatorial fellow.
 
Disrupting beauty ideals of cisgendered whiteness, Gutierrez reappropriates pop cultural imagery to center herself as both artist and muse.
 
“We are conditioned to assume that physical appearance is, in fact, identity, which is often not the case,” writes Martine Gutierrez in Indigenous Woman.“As mixed transwomen, we’re often seen as male when we feel female, or have been assumed to be from another culture because our ethnicities are ambiguous. None of us fit neatly into one category.” 
 
Martine Gutierrez (b. 1989, Berkeley, CA) is an artist, performer, and musician who produces elaborate narrative scenes that employ tropes of pop culture to explore the complexity, fluidity, and nuances of both personal and collective identity in terms of race, gender, class, indigeneity, and culture.

“Martine Gutierrez introduces herself as the cynosure of global desire," says exhibition curator Asha Iman Veal. "Mass-culture imagery becomes far more sly, tenacious, and intriguing when reimagined and revised by this female artist of color." 

This exhibition of Gutierrez’s photographs, presented in the Print Study Room of the MoCP galleries, represents a body of work that has been exhibited all over the world including the 58th Venice Biennale. In August 2021, Martine Gutierrez at the MoCP will coincide with Public Art Fund’s Martine Gutierrez: ANTI-ICON, a new series of photographs on 350 JCDecaux bus shelters across New York City and Chicago. 

Exhibition dates are subject to change due to Covid-19. Reservations are required. Visitors can make a reservation at mocp.org.

Top image: Martine Gutierrez, Covertgirl, Ad p44 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery NY