Known for his intimate work in photography and performance art, Gabriel Martinez is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is concerned with the impact of repression on male sexuality throughout history while investigating queer undertones within straight male culture. During the time of his FWM residency in 1998, Martinez was beginning to utilize antique photographic techniques and ornate framing in order to place his art and ideas into the context of patriarchal structures. In particular, he would experiment with installations and performances aimed at applying his own queer gaze onto the bodies of heterosexual men.
Martinez’s residency culminated in an act of subversion—Dominion Over Gentility—where the artist’s intentions are revealed through his revisionist rendering of photographs taken at The Union League of Philadelphia. Martinez staged a group portrait depicting ten white men wearing matching garments and posing in front of a mantle. Each man’s face has been digitally replaced with a past Union League member, sourced through photographs taken between 1850–1870. The artist—who is pictured among the group also in a gentleman’s evening suit—is the only figure who retained his own likeness.
This piece tells a story that appears familiar at first, but unravels when examined more closely as one notices artificial blurs and a rosy blush transposed onto the cheeks of each high-society member of the private conservative club.
Designed, screenprinted and assembled by the FWM Studio team, the negligee dressing gowns were personalized with the embroidered initials of each model. Following the photograph’s staging, the clothing was then reframed as a large-scale installation with custom cabinetry manufactured to individually encase each of the ten garments in wood and plexiglass. Presented alongside the photograph at Philadelphia’s Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, this costly and grandiose display tactic worked to venerate the men who wore these pieces.
