Julia Peirone, SE
Since her debut at the turn of the century, Peirone’s visual world is chiefly populated by girls or young women. Her series mirror aspects of vulnerability, shame, and sexuality in a time heavily influenced by social media and its effects on the creation of identities.
The artist is looking for the gap between reality and construction.Julia Peirone‘s oeuvre poses questions about the strengths and limitations of the photographic image and the way we encounter ourselves in photographs. The modern-day visual culture favours self-glorification and an obsession with abstract ideals of beauty. In her photography, Julia Peirone focuses on these notions to explore young, primarily female teenagers search for identity. Peirone‘s work has a proximity to the moving image.
Her photographic series often show casting situations and preparations. Retakes, fleeting moments, and failures are given a prominent position. The pictures can hardly be defined as portraits in a conventional sense; rather, they investigate mental states and visual conventions that reflect the demands of the external world. The photographs often capture the frustration that young women suffer after having been imprinted by certain ideals. The relationship between the model and the photographer, as well as those between the viewer and the viewed, is an aspect of several images by Julia Peirone. The artist stresses that “the girls in my pictures are victims of a gaze, but they are also strong and have power over your gaze.”
Julia Peirone (b. 1973) lives and works in Stockholm. She is educated at the University ofPhotography and Film in Gothenburg (BFA) and at Konstfack in Stockholm (MFA). She has had several solo exhibitions, among others at Liljevalchs Konsthall 2022, Gothenburg Art Museum 2017and Kalmar Art Museum 2018. She has also taken part in several group exhibitions, including atModerna Museet, Stockholm (2017), Borås Art Museum (2016) and Artipelag (2014). Her works are represented at Moderna Museet, Kiasma in Finland, the State Council of theArts, the National Museum and the Gothenburg Museum of Art. Peirone has published many monographs and catalogues, such as Braids and Bruisers, Liljevalchs+(2022) Girls, Girls, Girls, Gbg Konstmuseum (2017) and More than Violet (Art & Theory, 2012).
Potsdamer Straße 65
10785 Berlin
Germany
Represented by
Dorothée Nilsson Gallery, DE
Inspired by selfies posted on Instagram, where all faces and expressions are the same because of the similar faces and poses that everyone takes, Peirone started thinking about the mask as a concept.Why do we assume the same identity in the encounter with the world? Or is it a face we have decided is the right one in the meeting with the camera that has now become our mirror over the phone? She got the idea of filming and photographing girls who all put on make-up in the same mask/identity and chose Marilyn Monroe because it is an iconic look that we all recognise. It is also a look/mask that we associate with beauty and is very simple in its aesthetics and in its expression. Red lips, blonde curls, black eyeliner and the mouche. The girls had to put on make-up like Marilyn but without a mirror.
The camera took the place of a mirror and the invisible observer. In other words, the women could not see themselves while applying make-up. There was also something in the female ritual that make-up entails that Peirone became interested in. It is an intimate moment where the girl meets herself in the building of her identity and in the encounter with the world. On the video I am not blonde you can hear the original voice of Marilyn Monroe talking about ‘being’ a blonde and about ‘style’.In the Portraits, we discover all the small mistakes that have occurred during make-up. The human appears in the smeared lipstick and the sticky eyeliner. As viewers, we are tricked into reading the same picture, a Marilyn with blonde curls, but in the repetitive we search for what stands out. In mistakes we meet the human.
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Courtesy of Dorothée Nilsson Gallery and Julia Peirone -
Courtesy of Dorothée Nilsson Gallery and Julia Peirone -
Courtesy of Dorothée Nilsson Gallery and Julia Peirone -
Courtesy of Dorothée Nilsson Gallery and Julia Peirone -
Courtesy of Dorothée Nilsson Gallery and Julia Peirone -
Courtesy of Dorothée Nilsson Gallery and Julia Peirone