Rockford Projects

TOMORROW! (This is not a virtual event)

ON VIEW THRU 9/23

CAMOUFLAGE SNEAK PEEK No. 9
(Details):
Paula Henderson’s motivating impulse is the opportunity for challenging social perceptions and disparities. More specifically, she puzzles the social impact of the representations of women’s bodies in the commercial media.

The paintings resonate with their influence in the shaping of our personal sense of self-identities
challenged by these ubiquitous archetypes—of selectively enhanced and/or diminished proportions, and out of reach in their flawless manufacture.

Henderson’s work suggests that current views of beauty, so thoroughly conflated with notions of desire, power, and celebrity- distract the construction of our personal narratives. Postures struck by
women in selfies posted on social media suggest that the pervasive publishing of sexualized tropes, ubiquitous in commercial fashion and celebrity media, have come to function as a type of representational archive of poses for women/girls to circulate themselves as powerfully attractive and in control.

“In these paintings I utilize bilateral symmetry in which tracings of the contours of models taken from commercial shoots are multiplied as mirrored abstractions.” In some, patterns resonate with the culture of emulation- identities constructed from the pages of magazines.
In others, the images riff on models as power toys - armored, slick, accessorized, and deployed in a fashion ‘field’ as icons imbued with the power to shape the contemporary landscape.