In My Skin challenges warped views on women’s bodies and beauty

Art | Gregory Beatty | April 7, 2022

Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Own Your Cervix, installation, 2016. Image courtesy of the artist.

In My Skin
Dunlop Art Gallery
Until June 24

In My Skin features work by seven Canadian artists — each of whom, in their own way, falls outside what society generally deems to be “normal” or “desirable”.

Really, the exhibition title says it all. Because while those terms might sound benign, when the society that sets the standard is marred by sexism, racism, homophobia and other discriminatory attitudes they are anything but. The seven artists in the show have all felt that sting, and through their work you can inhabit their “skin” for a brief insight.

“The idea of doing a group exhibition on the body or the body politic has been on our list for several years,” said curator Wendy Peart in a phone interview before the April 1 opening. “It’s something I’ve always taken a particular interest in in my own art practice.

“Then when I started doing research, I found a new wave of artists who are pushing back against the stereotypes and norms that have been forced on them.”

The counterculture era of the 1960s and ’70s was a heyday of artists exploring the politics of the body and identity. Heck, there was even a Toronto queer rights magazine called The Body Politic that published from 1971–1987.

Canada is a much more diverse society now and the artists that Peart researched reflected that diversity. To help focus the show, she decided to use a feminist framework.

“I was looking at artists who were really pressing on the boundaries and resisting what society has set up for them as to how their bodies should look or how they should act, what they should feel, and what presence they have in the world,” she says.

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Societal norms and standards (both positive and negative) get reinforced in many ways. Sometimes, we pass actual laws to mandate them (such as when homosexuality was outlawed, or the slew of anti-transgender bills flooding conservative U.S. states today). On the less coercive side, mass media, family, religion and, in recent years, social media are important vectors.

With social media, though, it’s nuanced. It can be empowering by giving people a way to share their lives with others on their own terms. But toxic messaging about what’s normal or desirable still gets pushed — sometimes to an extreme degree, like with Instagram filters, which literally allow people to perform virtual plastic surgery to enhance their look.

Two of the seven artists in the show critique the beauty industry, says Peart.

One is Riisa Gundesen, who envisions bathrooms as spaces for beautification and self-care with beauty products. But then she populates her paintings with semi-grotesque caricatures of women that underscore the psychological trauma the ritual can inflict.

“Zoë Schneider also addresses the beauty industry,” says Peart. “Her work is about fat positivity, and questioning what those norms have pressed upon her and others who live in fat bodies. Her works resists those kind of pressures, and idealized notions of beauty.”

For two other artists, the Black body — and the politics around it — is a special focus.

“Ella Cooper is a Toronto photographer,” Peart says. “Her work places nude Black bodies in the Canadian wilderness. The bodies are presented against the backdrop of mountains and other vistas to represent Black joy and ecstasy, because often these bodies are not represented in the landscape genre, so she inserts them into that Canadian artistic tradition.”

The second artist is Shantel Miller, a young Canadian painter currently living in Boston.

“Her work addresses the Black body too, both in private and public spaces,” says Peart. “In her series Stepping Out there is a leg that seems to be leaving the front door, so there’s this idea of passing through from private to public.”

For people who may face harassment and discrimination once they leave home, that can be a fraught transition. Miller’s series captures the drama of that moment, plus the resolve of the person to not be intimidated.

The inherent risk of life for those marginalized by society is powerfully articulated by Indigenous artist Dayna Danger in three photographs from her Big’Uns series. Hunting, and the idea of women being targets, is one clear reading, with the spectre of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls tragedy looming in the background.

But the women depicted in Danger’s large-scale photographs are not victims, says Peart.  

“Dayna positions the women in strong poses, fully nude, but holding things like large deer antlers, fur pelts and other items of hunting ephemera that give them the power and strength to resist being objectified like that,” she says.

The final two artists are Jaye Kovach and Vanessa Dion Fletcher. During the run of the exhibition, both will do live events.*

“Jaye’s work addresses her body as a transgender woman, and her identity, which resists very much the expectations of a normal body in culture,” says Peart. “She’s presenting a series of photographs that focus on the tattoo work she does on her body. The images also document some performances she’s done pushing back on limitations, boundaries and expectations.”

Kovach and Schneider are Regina artists, while the other five are from out-of-province. Dion Fletcher, though, has presented work in Regina before at Queer City Cinema.

“The work we’re bringing in has to do with female reproductive health,” says Peart. “Vanessa does a lot of work around blood, and how that connects to the body and to her culture as an Indigenous woman. This installation is called Meet My Cervix, and it’s presented like an examination room.”

On June 4, Dion Fletcher will be in Regina to conduct a workshop and people can book a half-hour appointment to see her.  

“Often, cervical exams are wrought with a bit of stress and discomfort in a clinical environment where there can be judgment and fear,” says Peart. “This is a way for people to meet their own cervix in a healthy, safe and creative way.”

One final note about the exhibition. A big stick society often wields to reinforce its “norms” involves dismissing and demeaning identities and bodies that are outside the preferred range.

Some of that sad reality is present in the exhibition, says Peart.

“There is some conversation in the work around mental health. I think all the artists do that to some extent, really,” she says. “The work is really about self-preservation, and for the artists, it’s a way to work through things and be healthier.

“I can’t speak for them personally, of course,” says Peart. “But I think they have all gone through that process and come out the other side. I think the work also speaks to an ongoing process, and their intention to speak to others about the experience they went through.” 

*  Jaye Kovach’s performance “Brick” is on Central Library’s west outdoor grounds May 7 at 7 p.m. On June 4 Vanessa Dion Fletcher will hold an in-gallery workshop where people can book a half-hour appointment to learn how to do a cervical self-exam. See reginalibrary.ca/dunlop-art-gallery