Martine Gutierrez’s self-portraits challenge modern notions of gender and indigenity

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The American artist Martine Gutierrez has a reputation for deconstructing identities and constructing new ones. A trans woman of Mayan heritage on her father’s side, Gutierrez has specialized in critiquing commercial depictions of gender and indigenity.

In a tradition of female artists from Frida Kahlo to Cindy Sherman to Suzy Lake, she has used her own face and body as her medium. She has created a fictitious billboard campaign for Martine Jeans, published a magazine in which she poses as highly costumed Indigenous women, and spoofed Instagram beauty trends by hiding behind surreal face masks of oyster shells, banana peels and sliced eggs.

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Anti-Icon: Apokalypsis is perhaps her most daring project to date, a series in which she poses as 17 historical and mythic heroines, including Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, the Shoshone guide Sacagawea, the Biblical heroine Judith and the Hindu god Ardhanarishvara, who combines both male and female deities.

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Gutierrez shot the works alone during the pandemic, using only natural light. The images feature basic costumes – the Virgin Mary is wrapped in an aluminum space blanket; Cleopatra’s hair is made from a black garbage bag – and much nudity, including some full-frontal shots exposing the artist’s male genitalia. To show the works commissioned by Public Art Fund in New York on bus shelters, Gutierrez placed a veil over a large section of each print and then reshot it. A new show at the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver is the first exhibition of the full suite of the original works.

Gutierrez spoke to The Globe about conquering the male gaze, the role of nudity in her art and using her body as a medium.

How did you choose which figures to represent?

It felt very intuitive. I started with Judith the Slayer and I shot her three times because I felt I just wasn’t doing her justice, the spirit of Judith, the ferocity. She’s been interpreted so many times by so many artists that I felt self-conscious.

She’s a famous figure in classic art.

Yeah. All of them have been made so many times by so many artists that we understand their image almost in a way that lacks humanity. There isn’t a way for them to be figures that have flaws.

You chose to do Mary three times, as Our Lady of Guadalupe, La Madonna and the Virgin Mary. Why?

I probably could have done a whole series on her. Growing up, she was the figure in my house, she was a figure above the bed, on candles. I learned very early on that she was adapted into different cultural zeitgeists and that she meant something very different to different people.

Your style mimics that of high fashion photography or commercial art but also critiques it. How do you manage to have a foot in both camps?

That’s been my question: Is there a way to have the conversation and not posture as the thing, the way people have been taught to see, have been taught that these are validated products. It’s a language that I grew up studying. Growing up, I wasn’t going to galleries. I was looking at magazines and watching reality television. And I didn’t see any representation that I could identify with.

How did you decide that your body was your medium?

I’ve always felt really challenged by my body. At times, it felt like it has made my life more of an obstacle. It has been through my practice that I have learned to accept myself. And liberate myself.

There is more nudity in these works than some of your previous. Why did you decide to show more?

I would have loved to have a budget where I could have bought or borrowed a suit of armour from a museum.

So Joan of Arc could be in her armour?

I looked online and it just became this Pandora’s box of opportunities. Where do I draw the line? I felt that the body is actually the most timeless form throughout art history. And that is what these figures all share, this expanse of time. A nude is inherently timeless. What makes it modern is that it’s my body and people seem to think that my body is somehow modern.

Can one ever conquer the male gaze?

It’s rare to see nudes of women that weren’t made for the male gaze. These were made with a mother’s gaze, if anything. My mother was the only one around because we were in lockdown.

And I think her pride for me and support since childhood to pursue the arts has everything to do with why the pictures are so empowered.

I’m curious to watch men leave the show, hopefully in tears. Well, the reality is, it wasn’t made for them. It was made for my girls, for trans women.

But when your work is shown publicly you can no longer dictate who the audience is …

I tend to want to push the envelope: Whenever I’m told I can’t do something, it inspires me to prove otherwise.

The work was made for Public Art Fund, and I knew it was going to be on bus shelters.

I knew my nudity would create another creative challenge, but I would have to find a way to show the work with how I was. There was so much to talk about that didn’t have to do with nudity, it was something that I didn’t share with them until they looked at the images. I put forward a few different tactics of how we could veil the figures.

Public Art Fund was always very supportive and wonderful to work with. And I’m so happy that the works can be shown now in the way that was always intended. I like the idea that a work can have two lives.

So the Polygon show is an unveiling?

This is a real unveiling and I’m so excited. It’s never been important to me how other people feel about my body, about my practice, but it will be telling as to where humanity is at.

Anti-Icon: Apokalypsis is showing at the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver to Sept. 29.

This interview has been edited and condensed.