Post about three artists

Marina Abramovic has a very interesting take of self image and the portrayal of women. In the piece “Balkan Erotic Epic: Women in Rain 2,” she exposes the women’s genitalia (perhaps representing that women are simply sex objects to many in society) while other women attack and murder each other. The way I personally saw this piece was that women attack each other extraordinarily harshly when they should be united as one. In “Self Portrait”, she exposes her breasts but completely covers her face with her hair and is holding a skull. This concept is extremely powerful because it shows that people see women for their body, almost as objects and the face, or who they really are, is not important. It’s extremely profound and deep. Abramovic really uses her art to show the role of women in society and discusses her sense of self worth.
Frida Kahlo has very similar ideas to Abramovic. She really wants to symbolize the place in society that women hold. In “Without Hope,” It shows Kahlo herself being force fed food and a skull. This represents, to me, the things women are forced to believe in, forced to do, and forced to act in a society that basically run by men. The skull represents the inevitable death of oneself if she allows to be controlled as such. In her painting “Little Deer,” her head is attached to a deer’s body, and shes desperately trying to run away from hunters who are penetrating her with arrows. I felt that this represented the abuse and mistreatment of women in society. Not necessarily physical abuse, but in an inequality abuse. She is being persecuted and tortured. Most of her paintings show herself depicted, which makes it more personal and more frightening. To watch a recognizable face being tortured like herself in the paintings shows a life of pain, grief, and inequality.
Cui Xiuwen usually uses a beautiful, extraordinarily thin Asian woman in all of her pieces of work. The pieces are from an angel series, in which all the women are dressed in white and look extremely angelic. Despite the surroundings, like in “Angel No. 10,” which has a broken down background, the woman appears to be absolutely perfect. And she is repeated in the picture quite a few times. To me, this shows how women are becoming a brand rather than an individual self. It also shows the obsession with a certain look, which can be seen in “One Day in 2004.” There is the repetition of one model throughout the entire picture with the same exact outfit. This represents, again, the obsession with perfection and idealism. She’s trying to convey that women should be an individual and not what magazines or movies portray them to be.