Tomboys, Taboo, Totem: Figurative Paintings on canvas
These paintings invite viewers to see intimate relationships between two women, acknowledging and emphasizing the female gaze. The pieces featured in the show highlight and reference narrative portraits of lesbian relationships and their lack of presence in Western art history even though visibility and accessibility of the community has increased. These portraits, some rendered realistically and some more abstracted, offers archetypes of women as domestic lovers placed in the context and reference of famous artworks. Another facet of Cox’s work is the allusion to the lesbian community often being overlooked due to the societal dismissal of these intimate relationships. For example, two abstracted female figures walking on the beach and holding hands could merely be friends, relatives, or lovers. Societal thinking shies away from the latter, willfully assuming the former even when evidence is presented otherwise.
Her work seeks to create a space carved out specifically for these lesbian relationships in an effort to normalize, acknowledge, and elevate both societal and viewer acceptance that women can love women.
TABOO
I use narrative, historical art references, fantastical elements of costumes and autobiography to depict taboo intimacies between women—acknowledging and emphasizing the female gaze. My works consist of large paintings, photographs and monotypes created over the past two years. I construct intimate moments in my photographs and create narrative portraits of lesbian relationships. My work opens up a dialogue about the increasingly open presence of lesbian couples in contemporary society and the lack of their presence in the history of Western art.