Mie Rygh Reianes: "Sexualized"
“Sexualized is an installation and exhibition by Mie Rygh Reianes engaging modes of societal sexualization and gendering through the language of assemblage, photography and painting. All works have been created over the past few months with the artist residing in Florence and attending SRISA. Re-calibrated language of feminism is coupled with confrontational works that range from photographic self-portraiture to large-scale sculpture. Presented at the SRISA Project Space the exhibition invites a temporal and ethereal glance at coming of age within and beyond the constraints of assigned roles.”
- Justin Randolph Thompson
Being sexualized is to be made sexual. Therefore include becoming aware of or being prescribed a sexuality. Apparently, sexualization occurs when "individuals are regarded as sex objects and evaluated in terms of their physical characteristics and sexiness." (according to the American Psychological Association). I believe that a great part of my generation will agree with me when I confidently say that this plays a great part of our lives: with our smartphones, social media, like-dislike, (dick-pics), constantly looking for validation through the photos we share? Either by standing in or outside a “crowd”? Being hardened, and have gained new perspectives on gender after this project, it all seems to be about the sexualisation inflicted in our society (merged together with other things). My interest for the subject first occurred after writing a discourse analysis comparing the displaying of women in magazines both for women and men using Simone de Behaviours feminist philosophy: The second sex. Although it can be argued that this feminist philosophy (being published in the 50s) is still explanatory for today's society, it was an eye opener for me and as a result came 30 pages arguing that women as the second sex is still visible in many various contexts. (I was not okay with being “the other”, I didn't even know that my role as a woman had been secondary to men all my life).
Fascinating how we walk in transparent patterns?
On one side Behaviours philosophy is all about how women throughout history has been and still is being sexualized: prescribed motherhood, the role as an object, femininity and heterosexuality etc. The counterpoint being the man prescribed the role as the intellectual, being heterosexual, a subject and the constructor of society. This contrast might make it difficult to fight on the man's side in the development of feminism. Sometimes my impression is that I, as a feminist, is trying to climb the “ladder” up to the man's level as the subject, but in reality I think the gap between women and men need to be solved by de-sexualizing and deconstruction assigned roles to make room for new ones.
The exploration of these ideas and hopes is what project SEXUALIZED is rooted in. I have tried to view gendering and sexualisation in art using many different perspectives. The project has been developed over eight months, and is divided into three categories: gender as biological sex, gender as a social construct and gender as something fluid.
