Monsen Photography Lecture: Martine Gutierrez

The Henry is excited to welcome Martine Gutierrez as the 2024 Monsen Photography Lecture speaker. This annual lecture brings key makers and thinkers in photographic practice to the Henry. Named after Drs. Elaine and Joseph Monsen, the series is designed to further knowledge about and appreciation for the art of photography.

Gutierrez will open by sharing commentary on the process and images from the 2023 published monograph of her Ryan Lee Gallery exhibition, ANTI-ICON APOKALYPSIS, followed by a conversation with Shamim M Momin, Henry Director of Curatorial Affairs. The lecture is held in conjunction with a presentation of select works by Gutierrez in the Upper Level Galleries.

 

Martine Gutierrez is a transdisciplinary artist. Her amass of media—ranging from billboards to episodic films, music videos, and the renowned magazine, Indigenous Woman—produce the very conduits of advertising that sell the identities she disassembles. Through her examination of advertising, Gutierrez creates a hybrid of the industry’s objectification of sex with the individual’s pursuit of self, satirically undermining the aesthetics of what we know. While she manufactures ‘celebrity’ to pass as multinational corporations, it is Gutierrez herself who executes every role—simultaneously acting as subject, artist, and muse. Challenging the construction of binaries through the blurring of their borders, Gutierrez insists that gender, like all things, is entangled—and argues against the linear framework of oppositional thinking. Her malleable, ever-evolving self-image catalogs the confluence of seemingly disparate modes, conveying limitless potential for reinvention and reinterpretation. Read the artist’s full biography here.