There will only be one edition of Indigenous Woman, a magazine photographed, edited, and written by its editor in chief, artist Martine Gutierrez. “Why would I ever make a magazine again?” Gutierrez, a transgender Latinx woman, says over the phone shortly before its release. “It was so much work, and so much writing.”
The 146-page volume, which will debut at the Ryan Lee art gallery in New York on Thursday, sees Gutierrez adorned in Mayan textiles, inspired by her indigenous roots, in photo spreads that evoke the glitzy modern world of couture. “From behind long lashes and lacquered lips, I use the fashion magazine’s glossy framework to play with perception,” she says. “I employ mannequins, advertorials, and indigenous textiles to reassert control over my own image.”
That image, Gutierrez says, is one she hadn’t always felt belonged to her. Gutierrez explains that the word “indigenous” in the title is used to refer to native cultures from a particular region, but also “as a synonym for the natural and innate. It signifies a real, authentic, native-born woman,” she says. “There was a time when I believed there was no such title for me to claim.”
Gutierrez’ exploration into her identity — her mother is a white woman from upstate New York, she says, and her father is from Guatemala — began when she went through her Guatemalan grandfather’s collection of Mayan textiles. Her parents, she says, also collected these textiles while doing relief work in the late 70s.
“I used to play with them because they were colorful and magical, and they had animals and intricacy woven into them, so I could build stories around certain weavings,” Gutierrez says. “Finding those chunks felt very nostalgic, and I was instantly like, ‘I have to use these in a project. They can’t just sit down here.’”
Those textiles appear in the high fashion outfits Gutierrez dons in the pages of her magazine. The result is a union of influences — old and new, native and post-colonial — that collectively represent an interrogation into Gutierrez’ identity as a queer, mixed-race person. But Gutierrez says up front that there are no concrete answers to the questions raised in Indigenous Woman. “This is a quest for identity,” she says. “Of my own, specifically, yes. But by digging my pretty, painted nails deeply into the dirt of my own image, I am also probing the depths for some understanding of identity as a social construction.”
It’s artistic territory Gutierrez has explored before; in December 2016, as part of her project for the prestigious Van Lier Fellowship, which provides funds and professional tools to budding artists, she erected a billboard of herself topless in a pair of jeans in New York City’s garment district. “It was this claiming of my body and how I could use it, project it outwards,” she says. “It felt in a way like marketing. Then I felt the billboard needed to be part of a larger body of work, which birthed this magazine.”
The magazine contains several photos of Gutierrez, a faux perfume ad, and a letter from the editor, all crafted by Gutierrez herself. “Mine is a practice of full autonomy,” she says. “All photography, modeling, styling, makeup, hair, lighting, graphic design, and product design, I have executed myself.”
On the subject of how her queerness impacts her work, Gutierrez pauses before saying, “Straightness impacts the world without thinking it does. Queerness should be the same. It just doesn’t, because it’s not the majority.”
This is, in part, what makes Indigenous Woman so exhilarating to look at. It represents a glamorous, self-contained world in which queerness isn’t centered, because in the universe in which it exists, queerness is inherently central. It sees a trans Latinx person in total control of their narrative, while at the same time interrogating their own identity.
Those looking to experience the piece up close and personal will be able to do so from Thursday until October 20, 2018 at the Ryan Lee gallery.
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