JONATHAN VELAZQUEZ

Untitled, 2016

Marker on found book page

Museum Purchase, Selected by Olivia Olson-Roberts, Susan Prier, Mollie Schottstaedt, and Jenny Varner, students in the Mills College Fall 2021 Museum Studies Workshop, 2021.3.10

Jonathan Velazquez is a multidisciplinary artist working at the NIAD Art Center who expresses himself through performance, sculpture, and works on paper. Much of his art is playful and colorful and often features portraits of the NIAD staff in marker with a recurring motif of hearts on their chests. The pieces included in this exhibition are atypical of Velazquez’s work because they are created with a détournement technique in which the artist uses found photographs to create new meaning. These images are taken from photographer Sally Mann’s book that featured images of her three children growing up in the late 1980s. Velazquez’s addition of red bodysuits and lipstick on these girls expands on what was originally a personal glimpse into the childhoods of Mann’s young children, and highlights complex issues of projected femininity during childhood. Elements such as the red bodysuit also highlight the performative aspect of women’s labor, much like Clark Hobart’s The Tired Dancer, also shown in this exhibition.

—Mollie Schottstaedt