Michelle Forsyth, Improvisation 3: Herringbone Jacket #1, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and Corkin Gallery
I am my own muse brings together the work of women artists who look to themselves and other women as a means of social commentary. Issues of gender, identity, beauty, and fashion are explored over the span of the last century, as contemporary artists are presented alongside pioneers of the photographic art form.
The exhibition examines women’s relationship with the body from formal to conceptual. Spanning self-portraits of Barbara Astman, Michelle Forsyth, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp to staged and altered images of Claude Cahun and Sondra Meszaros, these photographs leverage the body as a political tool that reclaims gender equality, eroticism and women’s place in art history. Fashion, theater, performance and archival revisions are some of the strategies used to transgress hegemonic visions of the feminine. Photographs by Diane Arbus, Dorothea Lange, Lisette Model, and Sarah Moon complete the exhibition.
Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp derrière sa tête Dada (Sophie Taeuber-Arp behind her Dada head), 1920. Courtesy of Corkin GalleryClaude Cahun, Objet sous globe de verre (Object under glass globe), c.1936. Courtesy of Corkin Gallery
I am my own muse draws from Oroma Elewa’s paraphrasing of Frida Kahlo: “I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better.”
