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Gallery Exhibitions  Narratives / Blogs |
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Sheri Crider | Albuqueque, New Mexico At first glance, Sheri Crider’s Binary Prejudice appears to reinforce stereotypes rather than deconstruct them. But a closer look at the images makes obvious the binary prejudice that exists within any depiction of stereotypically gender-coded distinctions. Crider’s work presents objects, characteristics, and colors that have been traditionally read as gendered. Crider’s diptych format, itself, suggests a binary division with images on one side echoing images on the other. Take, for example, the pink and blue toothbrushes which suggest a parallel with the gender-coded hammer and duster. While appearing to speak in recognizable certainties, Crider’s work actually manifests itself in ambiguity. Perhaps she is suggesting that the way in which a viewer regards the work speaks more about the viewer than the image. Knowing that toothbrushes come in a wide variety of colors, it is the individual’s own binary prejudice that would motivate the selection of a color that society has rendered sex appropriate. In the same way, if we read the pink toothbrush as feminine or the hammer as male, the interpretations are colored by the internalized filter through which we view those signs. This notion is reinforced down to the level of genes with pink and blue background colors framing rows of chromosomes. Close up photographs of lips provide another opportunity to examine how gendered signs play out across the body as, once again, the choice to read the images through binary prejudice remains with the viewer. In Crider’s work one cannot assume or take for granted usually obvious signifiers such as lipstick and facial hair. Crider asks whether or not we can identify the gender of the mouths in her photographs; can we assume that we are looking at a man’s face when we see facial hair and do those painted lips belong to a woman? As Anne Fausto-Sterling argues in the introduction to Sexing the Body, “…labeling someone a man or a woman is a social decision.” Crider’s piece vibrates with the play of relationships between signs that we have traditionally recognized as male or female but cannot rely on with certainty any more. - by Marisol Rodarte
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