PLATO

Participating artists: Sanié Bokhari, Darina Karpov, Opal Mae Ong, Katya Muromtseva, Laura Sanders, Natalie Terenzini, Summer Wheat, and Jesse Zuo.

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We all know a painting for a male gaze: a woman as a pretty object to ogle and enjoy. What if we removed the male and perhaps even the gaze and painted our own picture? 

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We’ll revel in our afternoon fever of snacking and chatting, with clothes on or off. We’ll bask in the moonshine seeping through the kitchen window, having a cigarette, dressed in nothing but underwear and feeling cozy in our own skin. We’ll turn ourselves into a prickly plant with a flower over its face. No gaze, no man, not even a woman. We’ll dress up in trophy crocodiles and spout water like a fountain. We’ll turn into a shadow, nude, with our baby in our womb, and double as ourselves before and after we leave familiar lands. We’ll walk into the ancient waters of the past civilizations, dressed in sleeveless t-shirts, and challenge their skies with our daunting gaze. We’ll put a target on those T-shirts, both for protection and as a dare. We’ll pierce our ears and cry from pain, and then repeat and cry from pleasure, with no one watching. We’ll do and wear and paint and let you see and do what suits us. 

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Here’s looking at you!

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