It’s always a little overwhelming to enter an art gallery and have very little information about the artists or the piece (or art in general). Upon enter the dining room, i quickly noticed the abstractness of the artwork – and you always have to ask yourself, Is this good art? The answer, in this case, is yes – each piece had a story behind it that was layered with testimonial work towards identity, familial structure, current events, and general art techniques. The author mentioned the use of gender ambiguity as a coming of age identity issue and the general use of gender ambiguity as a mode of self-isolation and anti-questioning methodology.

My favorite piece was of the (gender ambiguous) woman that was situated in a window setting. The use of color within the painting automatically signaled me to see the woman as of middle eastern or Mediterranean decent. The use of vibrant reds, yellows, hues of turquoise/ other blues and greens were really the determining factor between my brain’s association of ethnicity/ race. And that is portrayed, unlike the other paints, heavily through the use of color within this particular painting. Which I thought was interesting, since I caught myself early determining such a heavily social construction based on something as subtle as color.