Berlin: gender_gap – Paintings by Martina Minette Dreier and Sadie Lee
gender_gap by Martina Minette Dreier (Berlin) and Sadie Lee (London)
at Schwules Museum in Berlin, October 5 – November 22 2010.
Paintings from the ‘doing gender’ series by Martina Minette Dreier
The Berlin painter Martina Minette Dreier paints portraits of people, who don’t and won’t identify themselves as either men or women. Among these are transgendered performers such as Ades Zabel, Océan LeRoy, Miss Debra Kate or the Spicy Tigers on Speed. Since 2004 Minette Dreier has been working on a series titled “doing gender”. Now her series consist of 49 painting and about 500 drawings. Minette explains that she made this series in order to comment the traditional portrait paintings’ role as a media which tells about the sitters social status, and use the status of the medium to make paintings of ‘gender outlaws’ and draw attention to them, something which they do not often get. Minette Dreier says, “doing gender” offers (…) freedom and creates a situation in which the reliable distinction between male and female gets lost.
Paintings from the ‘doing gender’ series by Martina Minette Dreier
gender_gap
The gender_gap exhibition at the Schwules Museum consists of a selection of Minette’s ‘doing gender’ series and portraits by the London painter Sadie Lee from Sadie’s series ‘And then He was a She’. This series are paintings of transgendered actress Holly Woodlawn, who is one of the last surviving members of Andy Warhol’s ‘Factory’ inner circle, the star of Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey’s cult films ‘Trash’ and ‘Women in Revolt’. These paintings feature the first time that Holly has allowed herself to be presented publicly out of drag. These are not just pictures of a man dressing as a woman; Holly is both male and female and neither. Sadie Lee says, ‘I want to paint her as she is now’. And she has made a ‘study of the representation of the ageing body, and the ambiguity of gender.’
Paintings from the series ‘And then He was a She’ by Sadie Lee
The Opening
Martina Minette Dreier and the Schwules Museum in Berlin invites you to the opening of gender_gap:
gender_gap
Opening October 4 2010 19:00
Schwules Museum EG (eingang 1. Hof)
Mehringsadamm 61
10961 Berlin
Paintings from the series ‘And then He was a She’ by Sadie Lee