Lifting the Skirt

2023

Oil on circular stretched canvas 

20" x 20" x 4"

“Lifting the Skirt” is a highly conceptual, unconventional painting and sculpture installation about the traditional vulnerability of and intrusion into female spaces. Hung titled forwards and above eye level, the work forces the viewer to gaze upwards in what becomes an act of violation into the space that belongs to the imaginary body “wearing” the canvas skirt. When they finally encounter the painting underneath, however, the viewer is met with another set of boundaries created by the fabric of the skirt and undergarments, only hinting at what lies beneath. The painted image, a reference to Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s “The Swing,” not only calls to attention the themes of eroticism and desire in Rococo era boudoir paintings, but also art history’s long flirtation with the female body, and the tension of what is chosen to be revealed or hidden in a work. Thus, the work also comments on the power of the gaze, and questions who is allowed to look–and who isn’t.