L: Martine Gutierrez, Front Cover, from Indigenous Woman, 2018. R: Martine Gutierrez, Covertgirl, Ad p44, from Indigenous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.
Gutierrez: Everything! Most people don’t take into consideration all of the minute details that make up an image of someone who doesn’t look like me or doesn’t exist in the same world I do, even though it is me. I am the creator, founder, editor in chief, grant writer [laughs]. There really wasn’t a budget [for the magazine], which is probably why it took three years to make.
L: Martine Gutierrez, Body En Thrall, p113 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. R: Martine Gutierrez, Del’ Estrogen Ad, p2 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.
I look at my photoshoots as performances—they are just hyper-controlled and private. Because my practice is so solitary, the live performances are structurally similar to my shoots and hold the ephemeral beauty of transforming [and turn it] into a feeling. The experience can linger in you the way an image can't. Live performance is internalized, so it can manifest in dreams or be remembered until death.
L: Martine Gutierrez, Queer Rage, Don't Touch The Art, p69 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. R: Martine Gutierrez, Queer Rage, Growing Up Bites, p65 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.
That high school picture of me—I feel like no one believes me. I’ll look through the magazine with a curator, and when we get to that image I’m always like, “That’s a school picture,” and they’re like, “Wait, that isn’t a photo shoot? This isn’t some recreated moment?”
L: Martine Gutierrez, Queer Rage, P.S. Your Parents Are Nuts, p74 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. R: Martine Gutierrez, Queer Rage, Ghetto Boys Make Some Noise, p75 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.
I think there’s an air of intellectualism that art needs to function. There needs to be rhetoric for the art world, for the museums, for the public who goes to these functions to say, “This is valid because…”I don’t know if I am trying to change that. I just know I don’t like to play that way. We’re living in an era where my existence is political whether I want to be or not. It’s really hard and emotionally taxing, and humor is my savior.
L: Martine Gutierrez, Masking, Green Grape Mask, p51 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. R: Martine Gutierrez, Masking, 24k Gold Mask, p46 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.
Masking was the first opportunity to not even be human, to disguise the conversation of gender, and to get away from identity politics. I had just done a body of work about mannequins and so much of it was about holding myself. I was doing the same thing—painting on my face with colors we assume are natural: red on the lips, blue on the eyes, flesh everywhere else, cover your beard, accentuate your better feminine qualities. It’s exhausting. It lost its fun and I lost motivation to keep making work in that way.
We look at things as black and white when there’s so much grey. Even people that think they’re in the black or in the white—they have a foot in the grey. We all do. It’s impossible not to.
L: Martine Gutierrez, Neo-Indeo, Chuj Mini Gag, p26 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. R: Martine Gutierrez, Neo-Indeo, Legendary Cakchiquel, p32 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.
That’s part of the question: Do I have that? I don’t think I do. I am an American, born in Berkeley, California, raised in Oakland and Vermont, and living in New York City. I have an Amerindigenous perspective. It is the perspective of both my parents’ cultures and yet neither, because it is my own mess. I've been called every iteration of a “half breed,” and it's no doubt the origin of my questioning. I'm asking what signifies a real, authentic, native-born woman?
Martine Gutierrez, Demons, Tlazoteotl ‘Eater of Filth,’ p91, from Indigenous Woman, 2018. Martine Gutierrez, Demons, Xochiquetzal ‘Flower Quetzal Feather,’ p94, from Indigenous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.
I went into it thinking I was going to call it Goddesses, because that’s what my community calls trans women. We are either called “angels” or “goddesses,” and I guess that’s how we’re looked at. We’re otherworldly. I was like, Let’s look at some goddesses from my ancestry. What [role] did they serve? The closest things to me are these deities. I like that word. It feels ungendered for an individual in a place of spiritual power.In [ancient Mayan] literature, they were referred to as demons. Maybe the establishment doesn’t think of these as people existing. It’s mythology. But for me—the person trying to relate to an ancient person that represented their community—they were seen as a demon, and even my reaction [to that] is connected to colonialism. That negativity catapults you into the underworld. [The Mayans] called it Xibalba, the underworld, and that’s where a lot of these figures reigned.
L: Martine Gutierrez, Neo-Indeo, Unclockable In Ixinca, p21 from Indigenous Woman, 2018. R: Martine Gutierrez, Identify Boots, Ad p98, from Indigenous Woman, 2018. © Martine Gutierrez; Courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York.
I can only speak on my life, my experiences. I feel like most of the questions I pose or the roles I assume are roles that I am grappling with in life. That’s why they feel so important to manifest, and in manifesting them, it helps me move on. Not always, but I have learned that the practice of image, video, or music making is to see something outside of myself or how society doesn’t see me—and it somehow comes true. It’s like making a wish, or putting a message in a bottle, and [it helps] you let go of the latter one.Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.Indigenous Woman is on view at Ryan Lee Gallery, New York, through October 20, 2018.Follow Miss Rosen on Instagram.