Riisa Gundesen's Pratt Munson exhibit explores gender and its accompanying anxieties

The historically male-dominated Western art canon contains scores of representation of female beauty through the male gaze. Riisa Gundesen’s work approaches femininity from a different perspective.

The Canadian artist, whose work will be exhibited at the Pratt Munson Gallery from Friday, Jan. 26, to Feb. 22, explores the relationship between the pressure and performance of female beauty standards and mental illness. She will introduce her exhibit in the historic Fountain Elms building with an artist’s lecture, an event which is free and open to the public.

This exhibit, entitled “After the Bath,” examines the bathroom as both a private space and a place where rituals of feminine presentation such as applying makeup are performed.

“Especially with this work, part of it is a little bit about the labor of doing these things to sort of make a feminine body look ‘right’ for the public,” Gundesen said. “And in the context of mental illness, all the steps of that feel very, very heavy, and it just feels like a lot to do.  I think there's also elements of bodily insecurity, the body causing elements of anxiety if it's not properly transformed, made presentable in that way – so the sense of the body causing the anxiety in the mind.”

Choosing Gundesen

Jen Pepper, visiting professor and gallery director at Pratt Munson College of Art & Design, headed the the committee that selected Gundesen’s work for exhibition. Pepper, who is a multimedia artist herself, echoed Gundesen’s assessment of the historical artistic approach to female beauty.

“That world certainly didn’t deal with issues of beauty from a woman’s perspective,” Pepper said. “I mean, we see plenty of the other end of it in the canon.”

Every year, Pratt Munson sends out an international call for artists who wish to exhibit their work at the institution. Pepper said that the committee looks for diversity in both artistic medium and subject matter, and that they were drawn to Gundesen’s unique take on beauty.

“She is really a contemporary painter who is taking head-on issues about identity, and beauty, and femininity and gender identity,” Pepper said. “These pieces are all kind of about masking, and how we have this veneer that we are under.”

The body, the mind, the self

Gundesen grew up in Calgary and lives in Edmonton, teaching painting and drawing at the University of Alberta. While her work has been shown in galleries across Canada, this show will be her debut in the United States.

Gundesen’s work primarily consists of self-portraits and still life. She draws deeply on personal emotions and sensations, translating her own experiences of mental illness and gender into art.

When Gundesen was in her Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Saskatchewan, from which she graduated in 2018, she experienced periods of depression and panic attacks. In the midst of these struggles, she noticed how messy her apartment became, which led her to ponder the home as an extension of the body and the mind.

Her interest and work regarding the private space of the home naturally progressed to the consideration of the bathroom. It’s an even more private and interior space, but simultaneously, it's the site of those public-facing rituals of femininity, the masking that Pepper mentioned.

“The bathroom is sort of this place of the putting on of the public self,” Gundesen said. “Speaking from the viewpoint of femininity, it's like putting on the costume, the appearance of femininity.”

Is the art world still male-dominated?

Gender disparities are still very much present in the art world, especially in the upper wealthy echelons. According to a 2023 post by London’s Maddox Gallery, between 2008 and 2019, work produced by women accounted for 2% of sales at art auctions, amounting to a $192 billion pay gap between genders.

As a university art instructor, Gundesen has noticed a curious phenomenon: while cisgender men make up only a small percentage of the students in her classes, she said that men still seem to dominate large auction sales and major galleries. A 2018 Williams College study found that male artists accounted for 87% of works in the top 18 art institutions in the U.S.

“There's definitely something going on between the hugely female-dominated, postsecondary situation and who actually makes it through to be working as a professional artist,” Gundesen said.

An immersive medium

Rather than traditional canvas, Gundesen works with oil paint on Mylar drafting film. She cuts the material into forms that seem to pop off the wall or sometimes drape onto the floor.

“For me, it creates just a lot more possibilities in terms of playing between the two and three dimensions, approaching the work from a lot of different perspectives and seeing how it shifts, and just having a lot more flexibility with how it’s installed,” Gundesen said. “It can change a lot between different shows just based on how things are juxtaposed. I think there’s an element, too, of maybe a little bit more immersion. There's this sense of the more real, three-dimensional space rather than the 2D illusionistic space. The viewer has maybe a bit more of a direct relationship.”

Pepper said that Gundesen’s unconventional medium was another aspect of her work that interested the committee.

“Her work is painting, but it’s a very unusual substrate that she uses,” Pepper said. “And when she cuts them out, they become installation pieces.”

Gundesen elaborated on her desire to create an immersive experience for audiences, one that relates to the relationship between body, mind and emotion.

“I think largely what I am interested in there, for the viewer’s experience, is kind of giving these bodily sensations,” Gundesen said. “You’ll have these moments where you’ll have the feeling of beautiful colors, attractive products, the treatment of the figure that is nice to look at, but then there's moments that fall more into something kind of abject or grotesque. It sort of catches the viewer and makes them feel maybe a little clench in your throat or your gut, and it provokes this kind of awareness to the viewer of their own body. So I’m interested in sort of a direct communication of sensation, and then I think whoever is looking then brings their own narrative and experience to that.”

Contemporary visions that resonate

Pepper emphasized that Pratt Munson looks to bring in contemporary art that addresses contemporary subjects. The gallery's last show, a video and sculpture installation by Brooklyn-based Israeli artist Zac Hacmon, stems from Hacmon’s collaborative working relationship with a transgender woman named Alexa. Alexa was an asylum-seeker from Nicaragua.

Gundesen’s exploration of the relationship between femininity and mental illness is another example of the gallery’s desire to represent modern issues. Pepper spoke of the prevalence of mental illness in modern society.

“It's good for not only the students, but community members, to see this type of subject matter being discussed,” Pepper said.

The gallery’s next show will feature work by Colombian-born artist Felipe Lopez, who has been an artist in residence at Pratt Munson for the last year. Upcoming programs also include student and alumni exhibitions.

Gundesen has been gratified to find that her representations of emotional and bodily anxieties resonate with audiences.

“I've had a number of situations where I've had really great conversations with people who do find that the work really speaks to them and to sort of the way they might feel about certain aspects of femininity and emotions related to that, about feeling uncomfortable or anxious in their bodies,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they connect with it on a very personal level. That felt very rewarding, and like I'm achieving what I'm setting out to do.”

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Riisa Gundesen Pratt Munson exhibit