Gender hierarchies
Video: 5’ 40”
Music by Scott Buckley CC-BY
2022
In this proposal, Diana Larrea raised a discourse on social construction of gender through the creation of new identities that move fluidly from femininity to masculinity. Larrea’s video highlight the subtle differences activated in our psychological process when we perceive a male artist or a female artist. Based on a selection of 19 self-portraits of historical women painters, Diana transformed their faces using FaceApp application, a photo editor with tools to modify selfies and generate changes in age, hair, weight or gender. Larrea’s direct references when conceiving this project were some feminist works fron the 70’s, such as Eleanor Antin’s “The King of Solana Beach” (1972-1975) or Ana Mendieta’s “Untitled (Facial Hair Transplants)” (1972). In these works, female artists use beard as a symbol of social authority and the strength associated with masculinity in our patriarchal system.
