User:Gifididdy/sandbox

Girlfriends
Girlfriends (2014) is a series of black-and-white photographs throughout which Martine Gutierrez poses with a single mannequin, creating ambiguous characters within changing realities. Composed and shot in upstate New York at the cottage of Gutierrez’s grandmother, the photographs depict three different couples, each of whom Gutierrez appears to match with her mannequin counterpart. Gutierrez’s utilization of mannequins is apparent in Girlfriends, as with many of her artworks. Historically, during the mid-1960s, the form of the mannequin experienced an artistic change in which it was used to  “…convey a feeling of overwhelming reality, convincing spectators…that they may be standing next to a real person. This illusion would be achieved by suggesting movement through pose and through the display artist's staging of the mannequin in a way that felt ‘real’.” Commenting on her usage of the medium, Gutierrez emphasizes the idealistic aspect of mannequins, stating “‘Mannequins very succinctly represent the artificial, especially in materiality, when compared to the imperfect reality of the human body…But in coaxing the viewer’s misinterpretation, misleading with light and guise, I am looking for the place where those two worlds meet.’”