Tegris Lin
I created my painting based on Manet’s Olympia. I wanted to create this piece because I was irritated at the presence of the male viewer, even if the painting could be interpreted to be challenging the male gaze. I did not want a painting where the subject was acknowledging the voyeuristic man, displeased and perturbed at being walked in on. Instead, I wanted a space where the woman was caught up in her own desire and pursuit of happiness. I also wanted a space where the relationship between the Black woman and the white woman was more equal, instead of the serving handmaiden and her mistress as Olympia portrays.
Due to my own queerness, I decided to take the approach of creating a romance between the Black and white woman. Certainly, love is not the equalizer of all things, and a love between these two women would not erase their differences in life. However, I can also personally attest that love makes the distance between two different people easier to cross, because of the care one person wants to show another. In the presence of love, empathy and understanding come easy, and so the difference between the Black woman and the white woman does not become negligeable, but traversable. There is also, frankly, not an impressive number of queer paintings, and I wanted to contribute to that number, to fight the small injustice I feel in my heart.
In queer media, specifically sapphic (a word that describes queer feminine love, usually regarding women loving women, but also referencing gender-nonconforming folx who love feminine-presenting people) media, the queer subjects are often sexualized. How many lesbian movies have the actresses posing in a way that displays their bodies for the male gaze? I did not want my painting to reflect that. So I have painted it so that the perspective is actually that of the women who see their hands intertwined beneath them. Of course, this perspective is hard to understand without the reference painting, but I did not feel a need to try and unnecessarily gender a pair of hands.
Another way I wanted to decenter the male gaze from my subjects concerned Manet’s use of flowers. Manet sprinkles flowers everywhere in Olympia, and different interpreters provide conflicting answers. I’ve taken them as a representation of the sex worker’s unwilling display for the male viewer. Truly, the number of times I’ve read a male author describe a woman they desired using florals is astounding. In my painting, the hands are holding the flower. I wanted to the present the concept of them removing the flower from the sex worker’s hair together. It’s a further representation of how their love for each other can remove themselves from being objects of male lust. Additionally, I’ve taken the pearl choker (which as I understand it, was a symbol that identified sex workers in Paris for the time Manet set Olympia in) and wrapped it around both women’s wrists. I did not want to take away the white woman’s status as a sex worker, especially as sex work and the queer community have long since been intertwined. Rather, I wanted the choker’s burden (at least emotionally) to be shared by both women, because when one loves someone, they want to share their troubles and ease them. My painting gives them that space of love.
