Posturing : Age Transformation

In this work, Wilson uses the same device as in another photograph made in the same year, Posturing : Drag, 1973/2008. In this new portrayal, she no longer dons a drag costume, but one of a mature woman. Here the artist plays a woman in her fifties who seems to want to look twice as young: twenty-five, the artist's real age at the time of the photograph.

As she often does, the artist superimposes conventions and combines several stereotypes into a composite, wry image that is both humorous and resolute. Known for her video and performance practice as well as her work as a gallery owner and avant-garde curator, Martha Wilson's work introduced an approach that would influence many artists of the same decade, who made questioning representation and the construction of identity the focus of their research.

This photograph by Martha Wilson is presented for the first time by the Pinault Collection in the exhibition "Ouverture" at the Bourse de Commerce in 2021.