Interview: Martine Gutierrez and Jordan Karney Chaim
Martine Gutierrez (b. 1989) is a Brooklyn-based performance artist who documents her personal transformation through film and photography. Borrowing from various pop culture idioms, she produces elaborate narrative scenes in which she stars. Smart, seductive, and sincere, Gutierrez’s imagery heightens awareness of our own expressions and perceptions of identity—particularly gender identity—by elucidating how each is informed by the visual tropes we are exposed to as we move through the world. Her work is invested in the construction of identity, self-fashioning, and refashioning—matters central to this issue’s theme, Self + Portrait. Martine Gutierrez: True Story is an exhibition I curated at the Boston University Art Gallery’s Stone Gallery. On October 13, 2016 Martine and I had a public conversation in the gallery to discuss her work and process. That conversation is included below.