In the Grounded photographic series, Laura Aguilar stages her naked body in the rocky landscapes of Joshua Tree National Park, landscapes that she transforms into queer and decolonized terrain. At once performative and sculptural, this act permutes territorial and corporal codes, as the artist’s body embodies issues of exploitation, thingification, and violence. Although tending to blend in with the arid scenery, her body is emphatically present; the confusion between object and subject is ultimately lifted in favour of affirming a tacit—and critical—presence. This sculpted body becomes the site of a denunciation of underrepresentation and discrimination and of their destructive impact on subjects: a protrusion onto the normative plane.

Exhibited work(s):
Grounded series
Grounded #105 (2006)
Grounded #111 (2006)
Grounded #112 (2006)
Untitled (2007)

Born

1959, San Gabriel, United States

Countries / Nations / Communities

United States

Died

2018, Long Beach, United States