Week 9: Artist Presentations

Laura Aguilar's work is one of the artists that I connect with the most because it takes a sense of comfort and familiarity with one’s body to properly execute a photographic style like hers. The artist is a large Mexican American woman who photographs her unique shape and body configurations into the environment around her. Many would say her body does not fit the traditional standards of beauty, however, that is the artists counterpoint in all her works. Aguilar’s body could be described as  “apples shaped” meaning her torso is round and significantly out of proportion with her thin arms and legs. Going against the norm, Aguilar does not cower and keep to herself, instead the photographer centers herself in environments where her natural nude female form compliments the environment as if to say she is and beautiful as nature itself. Although she may disrupt society's perspective on beauty, all of her images show a lack of disruption within wildlife environments traditionally disrupted by mankind. In many images Aguilar photographs her backside in fetal position to accentuate her round shape and organic curvature. For a large brown woman of color, her style of self portraiture helped pioneer the road for marginalized communities who are constantly made to feel inferior. The piece Self - Portrait #2 (1996) from her Show and Tell Series shows the epitome of her work, in my opinion. I gravitated to her work instantly after witnessing a unique confidence that I don’t usually see in a woman of her stature being compared to beautiful landscapes and embracing her body in natural space not intended for editorial magazines.