Fairies
Tuesday, 17 July 2018 07:29
Written by Alma Ruiz Senior Fellow, Sotheby's Institute of Art, Los Angeles
Mexico City-born, Mercedes Gertz has developed an artistic practice based on her ongoing interest in fairy tales. As the central topic in an extensive body of paintings, fairy tales—the ones most of us grew up with—are deconstructed and interwoven with her probing of conventional narratives and gender roles within patriarchal societies. Through her studies in depth psychology, Gertz has added dreams and dream interpretation to her image repertory as both fairy tales and dreams have their genesis in the unconscious. Trained as a painter, Gertz has nevertheless made drawing an essential aspect of her overall practice. Customarily her dreams and ideas appear as drawings first, then migrating into painting form and, more recently, into video and photography.
In addition to fairy tales and dreams as subject, the artist also finds inspiration in the memories of past experiences that include religion and accepted traditions. One of the topics which has enthralled Gertz, and to which she comes back often, is that of the Crowned Nuns (2007-ongoing). The so-called Crowned Nuns involve a curious Mexican Catholic tradition that reached its climax during the Baroque period. The custom consisted of commissioning the portrait of a young novice wearing a beautifully crafted crown before the coronation ceremony in which she would take vows of obedience, poverty, chastity, and often her permanent separation from family and the outside world. The degree of lavishness mostly depended on her social standing, with every item in the crown carrying some meaning. The novice's portrait became a family keepsake, an image of the young woman frozen in time as there was little chance they would see her again.
Gertz’s explorations of gender roleplaying have informed two projects: Nymphas Dissolutio (2010-ongoing) and the Sweaters of Hierarchy (2016-2017). Born as a collection of wedding photographs in which the bride in question had eventually divorced and thus separated from the bridegroom, Nymphas Dissolutio (dissolution of the spouse), takes the female part of the marriage equation, and turns her image, the bridal dress, and the bridal accessories into an abstract landscape shaped in the form of a mandala. The reconfiguration accomplished through collage and photographic manipulation (a one-time collaboration with photographer Nancy Louis Jones) symbolizes the reconstruction of the self after the breakup. Through her marriage vows, the bride is united with the groom to become one. When the break up occurs, the woman regains her status as a whole person again, although perhaps forever reshaped by the experience.
Further explorations of female societal roles are embodied in Gertz’s most recent project Sweaters of Hierarchy, which consists of three black sweaters with distinct white collars and one beige sweater. Each represents the patriarchal construct of religion, law, and society with the fourth sweater standing for the female body, naked and vulnerable. Starting as drawings of dreams Gertz experienced, the sweaters began to take form when they were realized by Knitting Borders, a group of immigrant women who uses knitting as a therapeutic exercise and as a dialogue for community building. Wearing the sweaters the artist and several friends performed different walks in public spaces in Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Lausanne, Switzerland. Each participant chose to inhabit temporarily a symbolic space of power or non-power in which she felt comfortable. The performances were documented using photography and a video in which they speak about their experience.
Mercedes Gertz studied art at Parson’s School of Art and Design in New York and Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California. Her examination of fairy tales led Gertz to pursue studies in Depth Psychology receiving a Ph.D. this year. Gertz lives and works in Los Angeles, California, and Lausanne, Switzerland.
In addition to fairy tales and dreams as subject, the artist also finds inspiration in the memories of past experiences that include religion and accepted traditions. One of the topics which has enthralled Gertz, and to which she comes back often, is that of the Crowned Nuns (2007-ongoing). The so-called Crowned Nuns involve a curious Mexican Catholic tradition that reached its climax during the Baroque period. The custom consisted of commissioning the portrait of a young novice wearing a beautifully crafted crown before the coronation ceremony in which she would take vows of obedience, poverty, chastity, and often her permanent separation from family and the outside world. The degree of lavishness mostly depended on her social standing, with every item in the crown carrying some meaning. The novice's portrait became a family keepsake, an image of the young woman frozen in time as there was little chance they would see her again.
Gertz’s explorations of gender roleplaying have informed two projects: Nymphas Dissolutio (2010-ongoing) and the Sweaters of Hierarchy (2016-2017). Born as a collection of wedding photographs in which the bride in question had eventually divorced and thus separated from the bridegroom, Nymphas Dissolutio (dissolution of the spouse), takes the female part of the marriage equation, and turns her image, the bridal dress, and the bridal accessories into an abstract landscape shaped in the form of a mandala. The reconfiguration accomplished through collage and photographic manipulation (a one-time collaboration with photographer Nancy Louis Jones) symbolizes the reconstruction of the self after the breakup. Through her marriage vows, the bride is united with the groom to become one. When the break up occurs, the woman regains her status as a whole person again, although perhaps forever reshaped by the experience.
Further explorations of female societal roles are embodied in Gertz’s most recent project Sweaters of Hierarchy, which consists of three black sweaters with distinct white collars and one beige sweater. Each represents the patriarchal construct of religion, law, and society with the fourth sweater standing for the female body, naked and vulnerable. Starting as drawings of dreams Gertz experienced, the sweaters began to take form when they were realized by Knitting Borders, a group of immigrant women who uses knitting as a therapeutic exercise and as a dialogue for community building. Wearing the sweaters the artist and several friends performed different walks in public spaces in Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Lausanne, Switzerland. Each participant chose to inhabit temporarily a symbolic space of power or non-power in which she felt comfortable. The performances were documented using photography and a video in which they speak about their experience.
Mercedes Gertz studied art at Parson’s School of Art and Design in New York and Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California. Her examination of fairy tales led Gertz to pursue studies in Depth Psychology receiving a Ph.D. this year. Gertz lives and works in Los Angeles, California, and Lausanne, Switzerland.