Real Doll, Raquel 4

Inscriptions

Initialled, on reverse, lower right, in graphite: MG; numbered, on reverse, lower left, in graphite: 8/10

Label

In these two prints, Martine Gutierrez plays the role of Raquel, one of four life-size sex doll personae created and performed as part of her Real Dolls series. Posing in domestic spaces with vacant eyes and motionless joints, Gutierrez highlights the thin line between fiction and reality and prompts viewers to consider what happens when those lines are blurred. A Latinx, Indigenous, and transgender artist, she often pushes against society’s perpetuation of, in her words, "rigid constructs—fabricated dichotomies like ‘male’ vs. ‘female,’ ‘gay’ vs. ‘straight,’ ‘minority’ vs. ‘white,’ ‘reality’ vs. ‘fantasy,’ ‘dominant’ vs. ‘submissive,’ etc.," by exploring the ambiguity and fluidity of such categories.

For the Real Dolls series, Gutierrez wore a variety of looks and poses she imagined would cater to heteronormative male consumers. Hanging near Francesca Woodman’s My House, Providence, Rhode Island, Gutierrez’s Raquel 2 features a figure similarly wrapped in plastic and tucked into the corner of a house, both bodies trapped within the confines of domesticity.

From the 2022 exhibition Embodied: Artist as Medium, curated by Isadora Italia, Campus Engagement Manager

Course History

WGST 65.6, Radical Sexuality: Of Color, Wildness and Fabulosity, Eng-Beng Lim, Winter 2015

WRIT 5, Visual Culture, Aimee Bahng, Winter 2015

WRIT 8, Writing with Media, Kenneth Bauer, Spring 2015

SART 29, Photography I, Christina Seely, Spring 2019

Sociology 61.01, Quantitative Social Science 30.17, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 33.05, Gender (In)equality, Kristin Smith, Spring 2023

Exhibition History

About Face: Self-Portraiture in Contemporary Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 23-August 30, 2015.

Embodied: Artist as Medium, Isadora Italia, MALS Class of 2022, Sol LeWitt Wall, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 1–December 17, 2022.

Provenance

Ryan Lee Gallery, New York, New York; sold to present collection, 2014.

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Subjects