Graduate student art featured in "Re-imagining Gender" exhibit at University of Michigan

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Two University of Iowa art graduate students are taking the main stage in “Re-imaging Gender,” an art competition at the University of Michigan.

Fidencio Martinez Perez and Corinne Teed both qualified for the semifinal round. Perez and Teed are both students in the Department of Art & Art History, part of the UI College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Their work is being displayed at Michigan’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) Lane Hall Gallery exhibit.

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, the University of Michigan’s IRWG invited Midwest graduate students to submit works for the competitive, juried exhibition. The exhibit aims to celebrate and interrogate the visual aspects of re-imaging gender based on the understandings of gender that have shifted in recent decades, according to a University of Michigan press release. 

Perez’s mixed media piece is titled “Clandestino,” a nude torso juxtaposed in front of a map of the U.S. and Mexican border, used to represent how stereotypical appearances can affect someone’s life.

Teed’s “The Lodge” depicts queer wrestlers in the shelter of a beaver Lodge to interrupt notions of species dominance and potential alliances through a lithography and screen print display.

The two UI students’ work went on display at the exhibit January 15 and will be showcased until Friday, June 26.

Tweet #RIGender to spread the word about their work.

The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers about 70 majors across the humanities; fine, performing and literary arts; natural and mathematical sciences; social and behavioral sciences; and communication disciplines. About 15,000 undergraduate and nearly 2,000 graduate students study each year in the college’s 37 departments, led by faculty at the forefront of teaching and research in their disciplines. The college teaches all Iowa undergraduates through the college's general education program, CLAS CORE. About 80 percent of all Iowa undergraduates begin their academic journey in CLAS. The college confers about 60 percent of the university's bachelor's degrees each academic year.