Justine Reyes

Artist: Justine Reyes

Title: Mask

Runs: Mar 24–April 23, 2006

Opening: Fri, Mar 24, 7–9pm

Location: 487 Driggs Ave, between N. 9 and N. 10

Gallery Hours: Thurs–Mon, 12–6pm

Contact: Info@JackthePelicanPresents.com, 718-782-0183

Jack the Pelican is honored to present MASK, the New York solo debut exhibition of Justine Reyes.

There is power in the photographs of Justine Reyes. Behind their veils, these women are hauntingly ancient and sexual. Pantyhose fetish takes on the proud, dark eroticism of Spanish Baroque. The eyes are piercing and provocative. Through gauzy nylons and lace, they peer with unblinking directness wantonly out at any taker. —She is your willing victim, perhaps, who owns you; or the one who will kill you, slowly, to your infinite pleasure.

“By photographing herself wearing these masks,” as Velle Magazine writes, “Reyes is able to make public a private performance, both an erotic and obscene gesture. She works with pantyhose because they are a highly fetishized material but to also make reference to the pantyhose masks of criminals.” Here, we might also add, 'victims,' as indeed many of Reyes’ ‘headmistresses’ are reminiscent of medieval torture devices and nineteenth-century brams reserved for muzzling women who ‘wouldn’t shut up.’ One also thinks of the kidnapper’s mewling prisoner, silenced as she is raped, struggling to breathe.

In 2000-2001, Reyes worked for the Gender Networking Program, a women’s rights group in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The offspring of a Mexican father and an Italian mother, she has an olive complexion, dark hair and eyes and, while in Africa, was often mistaken for being Saudi or someone from some ‘other’ Muslim nation. She observed firsthand the duality of the veil, as something that can protect a woman from unwelcome leers and also eloquently provoke desire.

“The mystery that the veil or mask creates,” says the artist, “is one that is highly sexualized. There is a tension created by veiling. Some people are afraid of not knowing what lies beneath the veil. In this work, I use the mask to explore issues of identity, veiling and the gaze in relationship to power and sexuality.”

The veil has become the (anti-)banner of women’s rights. The raging Islamic prohibition on women exposing their faces translates in the West as oppression. In America, there is a tendency to think of it as foreign strain of our native Puritanism. Indeed, many elements within the Islamic world are against sensuality and are egregiously oppressive to women. But that is not the whole story. The veil is not inherently anti-sexual. The ban, of course, does not extend to blinding women by covering their eyes. Ironically, as Reyes makes clear, the eyes are the most erotically dangerous part; even sometimes, as in some of her photographs, when they are covered. Nor is this lost on the Islamic imagination. As Reyes notes, to many Muslims, the historical reclaiming of the veil in the post-Colonial Muslim world was instead mainly a response to years of colonial oppression, when the wearing of the veil was outlawed.

Western viewers may be more familiar with European veil eroticism, as for example in late 18th and early 19th century paintings of proud Spanish doñas, coquettishly hiding behind their lace mantillas and fans. Reyes is quick to point out that some of this was the West exoticizing Orientalism. But our traditions also include the nun’s habit, the wedding veil, vintage church fashion, Jackie Kennedy in mourning and lingerie. One needn’t look too hard to see inflections of all these dimensions in Reyes’ hand-sewn pantyhose veils—nor to recognize them as fetishized gas masks and hazmat gear of the post-9/11 world of fear and aggression.

Reyes further develops the theme of the veil as a response to terror in 3.20.2003 to Present, her thirteen enormous crocheted panels that hang the length of the main gallery. She has worked on this mourning veil every day since the war began. It is her humble meditation on all the death that she (and we) can neither see, nor even comprehend. Three years of tiny stitches have turned it into a monument.

Justine Reyes lives and works in New York. She recently received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and her BFA from Syracuse University in 2001. Reyes' work revolves around issues of identity and utilizes a range of mediums including photography, installation and video. She has shown her work both nationally and internationally. She participated in Proyecto Circo at the 8th Havana Biennial in Havana, Cuba, and the exhibition of Fragments of Contemporary Urban Experience, which traveled from San Francisco City Hall to the Michaelis Gallery in South Africa. Reyes' Mask Series was featured in part in the Barcelona BAC festival in Piel de las Piels at the La Santa Gallery. Currently, her work is featured in “Surveillance” at the Jersey City Museum, for which she was favorably reviewed in The New York Times (February 9, 2006).