The Painter

This is the issue of gender in art (art market and history), specifically the predominance of cisgender men. Based, for example, on the work “The advantages of being a female artist (1988/2017)” by Guerrila Girls, which exhibited at MASP in 2017 and addresses the contrast between the small number of female, non-binary, trans, and queer artists, compared to the large number of nude female bodies in the exhibition of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of New York (5% and 85% in 1989, 4% and 76% in 2012) and at MASP (6% and 60% in 2017). In the performance, the constant and repetitive act evokes a sexual act in its phallocentric form, symbolizing the persistent cultural dominance of cisgender men in the art world — both historically and within the market. The screen represents the feminine, the queer, and the non-binary; its whiteness suggests an attempted erasure of these identities. The act of tearing through the screen becomes a gesture of ongoing violation, a metaphor for how these bodies and narratives are repeatedly invaded, silenced, or overwritten.