Fix Your Face: Representations of the Female Gaze @ SMCMoA

Fix Your Face: Representations of the Female Gaze invites viewers to consider the power dynamics of looking and the ways images shape perceptions of identity, agency, and vulnerability. Bringing together eleven works by nine women artists, Fix Your Face unites the media of photography, printmaking, and painting to examine the concept of the gaze and the relationship among the viewer, the subject, and the artist. 

Focusing on the ideas of agency and social dynamics, the exhibition draws on the British film theorist Laura Mulvey’s concept of the “male gaze,” which describes how visual media have historically portrayed women as passive or sexualized objects. Fix Your Face considers an alternative: the female gaze, which can emphasize agency, emotional depth, and the complexity of individual experience. By placing the viewer at the center of these questions, the exhibition offers a timely opportunity to reconsider the power dynamics embedded in images and the role each of us plays in shaping what—and whom—we see. Together, these works challenge viewers to consider how their own perspectives influence the act of looking. Fix Your Face asks: Who is seen, who is invisible, and how can changing the gaze change the way we understand one another?

“I learned to critically analyze a piece of media even if I didn’t initially understand it,” says Cole Erdmann ’28, a student in CORE 370, the course in which students were involved in the curatorial process. Erdmann says he found himself shaking off the notion that “I just don’t have the mindset to interpret and appreciate artistry.” And he was particularly drawn to Marion Palfi’s photograph In the Shadow of the Capitol. “This still image is so full of personality and emotion that it feels alive.”

Featured artists in the exhibit include Jackie Nickerson, Nicola Constantino, Johnna Arnold, Michal Chelbin, Barbara Ravizza, Barbara Warren Ebersole, Kathe Kollwitz, Louise Hervieu, and Marion Palfi. The three photographs by Jackie Nickerson, along with works by Constantino, Arnold, and Chelbin, will be on view for the first time as part of a recent gift from the Pilara Family Foundation and Pier 24.