look they lied to us

“look they lied to us” by alum Erin Gould.
Closing reception: Friday, September 6, 2024, 6:00-9:00 pm

The cultural associations between flowers and humans have a broad, rich history but the specific association between flowers and femininity/ female sexual maturity and marriageability is directly related to the Linnaean understanding of vegetal reproduction that was developed and disseminated along with his classification system. Floral patterned lace lingerie as a style and symbol for “blooming” women can similarly be related to this pervasive cultural understanding of femininity that developed due to the Enlightenment obsession with classification and solidified during the Victorian era– a femininity that is passive, beautiful, consumable, meant for heterosexual marriage, and opposed to masculinity. The Linnaean emphasis on the simplicity, clarity, and legibility of taxonomies and organisms’ place within those taxonomic systems promoted the crystallization of a strict gender binary with distinct and impenetrable differences established between the two supposed opposites. But, just as 90% of flowering plants contain some combination of pollen producing (i.e. “male”) and seed bearing (i.e. “female”) reproductive structures, human gender is diffuse and enigmatic. These categories, whether they be those defined in botanical taxonomy between class/ order/ family/ genus/ species, or those between “man” and “woman,” were created by humans with oppressive, violent, colonial understandings of the world and are fiction. “look they lied to us” is an exploration of these ideas through fragmented tracings of 18th and 19th century botanical illustrations and lace, deconstructed gendered garments the artist used to wear, found text and video, and collected “curiosities”.