Photo courtesy of Daderot via Wikimedia Commons. The Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, pictured above, featured various works by visual artists Martine Gutierrez and Jes Fan on Tuesday, Nov. 15.
Fang Cieprisz ’26
Staff Writer
On Tuesday, Nov. 15, the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and the Lyons Legacy LLC — described by the Mount Holyoke website as “a community designed to support students as they explore and express their whole selves, including their gender identities and sexualities” — hosted a “Queer & Trans* Art” event, highlighting the work of artists Martine Gutierrez and Jes Fan, who use their work to explore questions of gender, race, identity, commodification and the body.
The showing started in the Front Gallery with Martine Gutierrez’s photograph “Demons, Tlazoteotl ‘Eater of Filth’,” which depicts a woman with an elaborately braided updo surrounded by insects, black makeup running down her face and brightly colored clothing accented with gold jewelry. Before learning any information about the piece, viewers were asked to react, point out and interpret different parts of the piece they liked. Only then did museum guide Lily “Alex” Alexander ’25 reveal that the woman in the photo was Gutierrez herself, who was also the artist, photographer and stylist.
Alexander said that “her artwork seeks to dissect identity and explore how her identities have been commodified,” pointing to their favorite Gutierrez quote, which reads: “I was driven to question how identity is formed, expressed, valued and a weighed as a woman, as a transwoman, as a Latinx woman and a woman of Indigenous descent, as a femme artist and maker.” Alexander’s choice to begin with a discussion of the piece itself rather than the artist avoids reducing Gutierrez’s work to her identities.
That said, Gutierrez’s work is deeply inspired by the intersection of her identities. “Demons, Tlazoteotl ‘Eater of Filth’” is part of her series “Demons: Deities of the Ancient World Resurrected in Hair,” in which Gutierrez personifies what she calls “deities bigger than bodies” through her art, Alexander shared. The piece focuses on Tlazoteotl, the Aztec goddess of sin, filth and purification. Tlatzoteotl was associated with vice, lust and the distribution of sexually transmitted diseases, but could also absolve these sins by eating them.
Students discussed how the piece raised questions about the queer potential of embodying the concept of sin as a form of reclamation, what it means to be beautiful, the beautification of sin and connections to the AIDS epidemic, informed by what they had learned about Gutierrez. As an Indigenous, trans and Latinx woman, Gutierrez’s identities could not be ignored in the discussion at a queer and transgender art event, but they did not dominate the conversation either. Alexander’s art-focused framing of the event seemed to have a lasting impact on attendees as each referred back to the photo in their interpretations.
Discussion of Gutierrez continued with the display of her artist’s book “Indigenous Woman.” A stark contrast to her previous piece, this title places identity at the forefront of her art while satirizing it as a marketing tactic in fashion magazines. Throughout the magazine’s 124 pages, Gutierrez explores the complexity of Indigenous womanhood, going beyond the tendency to focus on the label itself to consider the connection between race, gender, sexuality and commodification. Notable pages include the “Masking” series, which advertises skin care masks made up of luxurious foods used in Indigenous practices, symbolizing consumerism through both the literal act of covering her face in food and referencing the appropriation of Indigenous practices in skin care products.
Like her “Demons: Deities of the Ancient World Resurrected in Hair” series, Gutierrez utilizes self-portraiture in the magazine, often aided by props such as mannequins in visual reference to the superficiality of consumer culture. Gutierrez also draws attention to Indigenous culture itself, modeling traditional Mayan clothing from her family’s own collection, uplifting a culture typically appropriated or ignored in the fashion industry. Throughout the magazine, Gutierrez successfully toes the line of exploring and calling attention to her identities without letting herself be solely defined by them, all the while commenting on consumer culture and its relationship to marginalized identities.
The final piece shown during the event was Fan’s sculpture “Diagram X.” After giving attendees a chance to walk around the sculpture, viewing it from all sides, museum guide Jocelyn Greer ’23 asked people about their initial impressions. Some said the piece evoked vulnerability, another the human body. Greer gave some background on the sculpture, “Fan is a trained glass blower so he often includes these globular structures in his pieces, adding many elements including precarity and motion. He makes a lot of art reflecting the human body, so sometimes he creates casts of body parts: his friend’s neck, his ex partner’s breasts. … He also has been known to inject estrogen, testosterone, melanin and other substances into the globules,” Greer said.
Like Gutierrez, Fan’s work also emphasizes identity, but he focuses explicitly on the physicality of the body. An Art21 video played during the event shows Fan working in a lab creating melanin, then cuts to him in his Brooklyn studio working with semen, blood, melanin and urine. Fan does not shy away from the fact that these materials are viewed as unsanitary. He talks about the way in the United States race and infectiousness are linked, making reference to segregation and COVID-19, as well as how beauty in Asia “is smooth, has no corners, does not repulse.”
The use of such unconventional materials is therefore an attempt to subvert beauty standards, “evoking a sense of this uncanniness, but simultaneously so erotic that you can’t stop but to be attracted to it.” Fan also connects the usage of biological materials to his transition; per the Art21 website, Fan explained, “Using testosterone to masculinize my body is in some way similar to using a chisel to carve out a surface. In a way, you’re sculpting your body.” Thus, Fan’s art is an extension of the transgender experience.
Overall, students were highly receptive to the event. Ricky Ricketts ’26 spoke about how “Gender being conveyed through art is so deeply beautiful. As a trans person, I always love to see how other people view and represent themselves. Getting to learn about not only the art but also the trans artists was such an amazing experience.” Grace Robes-Kenworthy ’26 added, “I was excited that Trans Visibility Week extended beyond simple statements of trans existence and actually strove to teach and inform about individual trans experiences, as well as trans expression.”
“Gender being conveyed through art is so deeply beautiful. As a trans person, I always love to see how other people view and represent themselves. Getting to learn about not only the art but also the trans artists was such an amazing experience.”