Portraits of “The Others”
“By personally depicting and designating “Otherness,” these paintings confront the viewer and challenge preconceptions, implicit biases, or hardened prejudices.” - Sean Fitzgibbons
Nathan Madrid
SEPTEMBER 5 – NOVEMBER 22, 2017
In this series, artist Nathan Madrid investigates our culture’s perception of “the other" and "otherness,” ingroups and outgroups, to expose how prescribed labels determine society’s behavior toward a social group because of race, gender, sex, class, and religion. Through his paintings, viewers are actively challenged to situate themselves in relation to those depicted, to embrace the diversity of others or marginalize them.
ARTIST STATEMENT
“The Others” refer to people that are labeled and identified to be outside of Western societal norms because of their differences to the aesthetic or political ideal.
This series investigates our culture’s perception of “the other and otherness” and how prescribed labels determine society’s behavior toward a social group because of race, gender, sex, class, and religion. When someone is perceived to challenge the dominant group’s value and beliefs, he or she are marginalized and excluded. This exclusion leads to social groups without a political voice with fewer rights like not being able to marry someone that is the same sex or people of different race and class not having the right to vote. To explicitly challenge this notion, the work uses the painted portrait to generate a high viewer involvement. Through this engagement, a social perception is made to determine whether or not the sitter of the portrait is part of the individuals group or is in the out-group. At the same time, the viewer questions whether or not the person embraces their prescribed identity or falls victim to categorization.
Echoing the socially constructed identity of the sitter, the work, at first, seems disjointed with visible construction lines with some parts missing. The partially complete areas of the painting let the viewer fill in the blanks and derive the secondary meaning of what the work signifies. Subconsciously we create social categories and groups when we interact with someone else. During this interaction, one can either recognize our shared humanity and embrace diversity ignoring the rhetoric to engage in productive discourse or decide not to.