The Painter

Statement

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.