02 Gabrielle Paré

Title: Filipinx Mestizx ii

Dimensions: 31.5in x 23.6in

Year of Completion: 2019

Medium: Archival Pigment Print

Estimated Value: $550

Courtesy of the Artist

The images of the Filipina mestiza (with their mix of both Spanish and indigenous blood) were captured by primarily European photographers. The tropes of this 19th century mestiza portraiture – rich drapery, a stack of books, silk garments and a folding fan – would go on to iconize the image of the mestiza of the Philippines. 

The portraits from the series Filipinx Mestizx are staged with contemporary bodies. They inhabit this form, though they also intervene with a mango seed for an ear, food packages from the diaspora and book titles that subvert the western male gaze – invented symbols of a mestizx identity.

Gabrielle Paré (b. 1989) lives and works in Oslo, Norway. She holds an MFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (Norway), and a BFA in Art and Design from the University of Alberta. Through an interdisciplinary practice that spans creative writing to video-installation and photography, Paré confronts the borders of identity with the uncanny, the uncomfortable and the hybrid body. Her own body is used performatively; both as tool and locus for the exploration of culture, filiation, and personal mythology.