Rosemary Meza-DesPlas: My Hair Story–From Brunette to Gray | Exhibition Guide

"My referential sources for the human figure are multifarious: I have employed images from art history books, mass media, hired models, and even used my own body. This series, centered on body image, focuses on analyzing fetishized areas of the female figure in art history: breasts and buttocks. 

An analysis of these body parts' symbolic meaning through history would raise questions about arbitrary notions of beauty and contradictory norms for the female figure. Alongside these considerations are symbolic cultural associations to breasts and buttocks. Historically, the breast has taken on different meanings and roles: sacred, domestic, political, and erotic. The breasts and buttocks in my artworks are embodiments of beauty that communicate ideas about ageism, eroticism, maternity, and sexism to the viewer. Shapes droop uncompromisingly, spread with the advancement of age, and twist into folds of melancholy skin."

—Rosemary Meza-DesPlas

How does a platonic relationship between men differ from intimacy between female friends? In the modern age, intimacy is shaped by a diversification of visual images populating mass media: Images informed by prevailing stereotypes and the expectations of gender roles.

This body of work was created in response to those images, particularly those from "bromance" movies. As a genre, the archetypal bromance movie uses comedy to talk about emotional intimacy between men in a way that circumnavigates the suggestion of homosexuality. In her blog, Disrupting Dinner Parties, Feminism for Everyone, feminist writer Rosie Franklin says, “there are no neologisms for female platonic friendship the way there are for male friendship.” In these artworks, I am the main character rendered alongside women friends. We are engaged in the human activity of intimacy. The familiarity of intimacy is replicated in simple actions despite the complex nature of intimacy.

—Rosemary Meza-DesPlas

Historically, labor has been divided by gender. In pre-industrial societies, when transportation modes were limited, women frequently performed tasks such as collecting water and gathering fuel. Often, women carried these collected materials on their heads. They acted and were perceived as conveyors. 

Illustrations of such labor can be seen in the recorded history of Western societies as far back as the illuminated manuscripts from the fourteenth century. Which made me think, what physical and abstract burdens do women carry in the 21st century? Weight hauled by women can take on a psychological shape of enormous proportions. In these artworks, abstract personifications of gender-based burdens weigh on women's heads. 

Emma Sulkowicz #1 confronts the act of rape on a college campus and its aftermath in a digital age where anything can go viral. Circulated across the internet, the image of Emma Sulkowicz carrying her dorm mattress became a striking daily reminder of gender-based violence on college campuses. The image in Emma Sulkowicz #1 is of Sulkowicz carrying an oversized vagina. Ultimately, Sulkowicz’s act of resistance is one of survival and endurance. 

In my family, gender-based burdens of violence and poverty have had a significant impact. In I’m the Wilderness, I’m the White Noise, a family member's face challenges the viewer's gaze. Gender-based burdens disproportionately affect women of color. The late Mexican poet Susana Chávez uttered these words to protest femicides in Juárez: “Ni una mujer menos, ni una muerta más.”  Her words, “Not one woman less, not one more death”, became the rallying cry across Latin America. 

—Rosemary Meza-DesPlas

In her 2007 keynote speech at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference, Audre Lorde spoke about anger being “a powerful source of energy serving progress and change” and “Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being.” This series explores the idea that anger can be used as a tool for change. 

I created Twelve Angry Women in response to the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing; specifically, Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation of sexual assault. The work’s title recalls the 1957 film 12 Angry Men.

What You Whispered, Should Be Screamed centers on the #MeToo movement that spread on social media starting in October 2017. While #MeToo was amplified by Hollywood women, it began with Tarana Burke, a Black activist. Burke highlighted the fact that many women spend their entire lives in concealed and unconcealed sexualized environments. Fueled by the momentum of the #MeToo movement, thousands of women exercised their agency by sharing their stories of sexual abuse, and, most importantly, naming their abusers. The movement directly impacted women of color due to socio-economic limitations and cultural stigma.  

Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger by Soraya Chemaly and Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger by Rebecca Traister served as inspiration in my studio practice. 

—Rosemary Meza-DesPlas

*Jane Anger, the title of this series, refers to a British writer who published the pamphlet Jane Anger, Her Protection for Women in the 16th century. 

Marching is the simplest use of the physical body as a political force. For this series, I re-examined the history of marches, particularly protest demonstrations led by women. Because individuals are subsumed by a larger group during a protest, you won't find identifiable faces in these works. There are, however, plenty of legs, which suggest the varying tempos, pauses, and motions of bodies during a marching demonstration.

The feminine figures in these works are nude to emphasize the vulnerability of physical bodies during a protest. Art-historically, partially nude women have served as political symbols. In Liberty Leading the People, Eugene Delacroix depicts Liberty as a robust figure with exposed breasts who holds the French flag high and strides over fallen soldiers in a dramatic appeal to French nationalism. Through visual proximity, Liberty's bosom becomes a discrete, corporeal representation of the heart of France. The physical comes to represent the abstract in much the same way that Liberty's flag represents the abstract body of the nation.

In my works, unlike in Delacroix’s infamous painting, the nude female body conveys not only defiance but vulnerability too. The bodies I show have blemishes on the flesh and evident signs of aging to illustrate the demographic diversity that makes up a protest march.

One aspect of my studio practice has been raising questions about stereotypical concepts of beauty. In Miss Nalgas USA I confront these stereotypes head on. 

Miss Nalgas USA consists of a performance artwork, an art installation, and video artworks. As a performance, it featured contestants vying for the honor of Miss Nalgas USA 2022 (Miss Buttocks USA 2022). This invented beauty pageant focused on self-identifying women over 50. Graces, Nalgonas, Marías is the last artwork in this series. Graces refers to the three graces in art history, nalgonas is buttocks in Spanish, and Maria is a popular girl's name in Spanish-speaking countries. Three poses inspired by the Super Bowl performance of Jennifer Lopez and Shakira unfold across the black twill fabric. Figurative stances emphasize the desirable attribute of the Latina: a bodacious bootay. 

The dual identity of Latina American, however, foists different, conflicting beauty standards onto the Latina body. These conflicting standards are best illustrated by American superstars J-Lo & Shakira, both of whom exist as singers and sexualized stereotypes of Latina bodies in the popular imagination. This concept of dual identity and related beauty standards is studied in From Bananas to Buttocks: The Latina Body in Popular Film and Culture, a 2007 non-fiction collection of essays edited by Myra Mendible. 

The figurative forms of Miss Nalgas USA are hand-stitched and made with human gray hair to highlight socio-cultural notions that burden aging women, such as J-Lo & Shakira who were 50 and 43 respectively during their Super Bowl performance.

—Rosemary Meza-DesPlas