Laura Aguilar
Untitled #113, 2005
Digital photograph 1/5
Courtesy of the artist
Laura Aguilar
Center #82, 2000
Gelatin silver print 2/10
Courtesy of the artist
“Through my art I have been able to find some comfort and peace with my body.”
As an obese, dyslexic, Latina, lesbian photographer, Laura Aguilar has spent over twenty years challenging popular conceptions and questioning societal norms of what is considered beautiful. In its continued mission to break stereotypes of the Latino experience in America, the Museo Alameda is proud to present Laura Aguilar: Life, the Body, Her Perspective.
Based in the San Gabriel Valley outside of Los Angeles, she uses her work—which consists of photographic series, video pieces, and installations—to depict those who do not fit the norm dictated by society. She portrays friends, acquaintances, and herself, minorities in society with respect to either race, gender, or sexuality. Yet unlike other photographers, Aguilar does not emphasize any notion of “freakishness,” instead emphasizing a more aesthetically classical approach. She presents the body as landscape, as sculpture.
Aguilar's work questions social identities in a way that moves away from other recent investigations into identity politics. Her body of work is one that seeks to embody not the experiences of certain social groups—Chicana, black, lesbian—but rather the experiences of individuals, especially the experience of the artist herself. Her self-portraiture is a testament to her bravery and honesty before the camera, a refusal to conform to social standards that, in turn, invites us to question our own.
-Laura Aguilar, from The Body
As an obese, dyslexic, Latina, lesbian photographer, Laura Aguilar has spent over twenty years challenging popular conceptions and questioning societal norms of what is considered beautiful. In its continued mission to break stereotypes of the Latino experience in America, the Museo Alameda is proud to present Laura Aguilar: Life, the Body, Her Perspective.
Based in the San Gabriel Valley outside of Los Angeles, she uses her work—which consists of photographic series, video pieces, and installations—to depict those who do not fit the norm dictated by society. She portrays friends, acquaintances, and herself, minorities in society with respect to either race, gender, or sexuality. Yet unlike other photographers, Aguilar does not emphasize any notion of “freakishness,” instead emphasizing a more aesthetically classical approach. She presents the body as landscape, as sculpture.
Aguilar's work questions social identities in a way that moves away from other recent investigations into identity politics. Her body of work is one that seeks to embody not the experiences of certain social groups—Chicana, black, lesbian—but rather the experiences of individuals, especially the experience of the artist herself. Her self-portraiture is a testament to her bravery and honesty before the camera, a refusal to conform to social standards that, in turn, invites us to question our own.