Cultural Event #3

ArtRAGEous Art Show

            The student led group, RAGE (Rape Awareness and Gender Education) here at the University of Denver, is a group whose goal is to educate the DU community about sexual assault, rape, and gender identity. They recently organized and hosted an art show in the Driscoll gallery here on the DU campus, called ArtRAGEous. The mission of the show was to exhibit student art that expressed that artist’s rage about topics relating to rape, sexual assault, gender issues, and body image. The art was done by DU students and was open to all forms such as photography, painting, drawing and sculpture. I decided to not only attend the opening, but also submit a piece of my own, a photograph.  At the opening, there were many interesting works of art, but there was one piece that stood out to me, which I am going to compare and contrast to my photograph that was in the show.

            The first piece, my piece, was a 13”x 11” color photograph. With this photograph, I choose to express my rage about body image and the way women are constantly told they need to be skinny and perfect by the media. The subject of my photograph is a Caucasian woman. The only part of her that is shown in the photograph is her stomach and chest area, with the main area of concentration being on her stomach. The stomach is exceptionally skinny looking, with her skin stretching tight across her ribs and her waist concaved inward. The woman is lying down on top of a bed of Cosmopolitan and Seventeen magazines, all of which are addressed to women and young girls. On the front of the magazine’s there are cover stories on how to achieve your “perfect body” such as, “Get Your Best Body Ever!”, “Flatten Your Belly”,  “Look Cute Now”, “Curb Your Cravings”, “Lose Weight While You Eat”, and “Flatten Your Abs Fast”. The photograph grabs your attention, with the bright colors from the magazine and the emancipated looking body in the center.

            The next work of art, done by an anonymous artist, is also a color photograph and similar to the previous one has a woman as the main content. The woman is Latino and unlike my photograph, her face is visible and she is staring directly at the camera with a seductive look in her eye. It is a powerful gaze, enforcing the message the picture is trying to portray; the message of dismissing shame of one’s body and self-image. To support this message, the artist has written across the woman’s bare chest the words, “Caress My Chaos”. The woman is wearing a vibrant red cloth around her breasts and her hands are up in her hair, which is unruly and framing her face.

            The two photographs are similar because they express their rage about body image and use the female body to express this rage. They both use words as an aid to enforce their messages, yet the ways these words are shown in the pictures are different, for one is written on the body and the other on magazine covers surrounding the body. They are also different in the amount of body that is shown. In my work of art, I choose not to include the face of the woman so her body could represent all women who feel the pressure our media puts on our culture to be skinny and perfect. When the artist included the woman’s face in the second photograph, it became more personal and more about the story behind the woman in the photo. This exhibit was interesting to go to not only as a viewer, but also as an artist in the show, for I was able to find interesting comparisons between my photograph with other works of art there and see how powerful messages can be portrayed through art.