From May 27th to 30th, Esthetic Theory was on display at Girls’ Club Annex Space. The exhibition was curated by Rosemarie Romero (BFA ’09) and included alumnus Orlando Estrada (BFA ’08).
Esthetic Theory was a group exhibition that functions like a full service salon and spa. The exhibit consisted of artists whose work explores the high impact, glossy and glittery materials, forms, and processes that evoke and celebrate feminine excess, pleasure, cosmetic artifice, bodywork, sexuality, and the “performativity” of gender. “Low” culture aesthetic practices, “high art” conventions, and spiritual signifiers are appropriated and manipulated to create hybrid works that blur the line between art commodity, fetish objects, craft, kitsch, fashion, entertainment and gendered extensions of the body. Pulling together artists whose work straddles high and low art, the exhibit created an interactive experience that placed creative artistic practice adjacent to the traditional feminine practices of pampering and primping. Both rely on traditional and nontraditional notions of beauty, but often diverge in legitimacy within the art world and general social perceptions. The artwork displayed was created by local and national artists Sarah Beth Woods, Helen Maurene Cooper, Orlando Estrada, Crystal Pearl, Rosemarie Romero, and Jill Weisberg. (Source: Girls’ Club)
Orlando Estrada creates interactive, mixed media healing systems and devices which highlight the queerness of inhabiting a human body. Artist and curator Rosemarie Romero creates abstract paintings inspired by urban nail art, airbrush, ornamentation, & cosmetic geometry. At the May 30th reception for Esthetic Theory, Romero offered on-site manicures, massages, gossip, and “chusmeria” by her alter ego Porn Nail$. (Source: Girls’ Club)
The photos are by Annelise Dominguez, courtesy of Girls’ Club Collection, Fort Lauderdale.
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