“A common misunderstanding is that my work is about intimacy. It's just as much about a sort of constructed intimacy or consuming what we think of as other people's intimate moments, which maybe aren't intimate at all.”
The pleasure and politics of looking
What does it mean to look at another person? And how does that change when you are a woman looking at the woman you love? Tenderness, love and care are painted into the soft pink hues of Jenna Gribbon’s oil paintings. Body parts dominate huge canvases. She almost exclusively paints her wife, musician Mackenzie Scott. She describes their relationship as “reciprocal musedom.” They find a new queer meaning of the word ‘muse’ – one built on consent and freedom rather than directional power.
Gribbon wants to change the dynamic between the viewer and the subject. Her smaller works are ‘documentary pa...
Bio
Jenna Gribbon (she/her) was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, 1978. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Early life
Gribbon was fascinated with art from an early age. Since art education at her school was very limited, she fell in love with it through books and on television.
In their words
“I’m always interested in the way that people are seen versus the way that they think they are or the way they want to be”
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As Janelle Monáe’s new album heralds the age of pleasure, femme visual artists are also imagining sexualities liberated from the male gaze.
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Gemma Rolls-Bentley's Collection
For Gemma Rolls-Bentley, collecting begins with understanding your own values and what you represent. As a curator and creative consultant, this is how she approaches her own collection as well as those she builds for others – guided by the idea that art should hold real meaning for those who spend time with it. The art that fills her South London home is a reflection of the queer family she is creating with her wife, poet and dementia specialist, Danielle Wilde.
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