Conditions of the Feminine

Annie Cabigting's Conditions of the Feminine continues her series of paintings of people looking at art. Both serving as portraits of anonymous viewers as well as representations of particular paintings in the state of being viewed, the series capture this highly reflexive process of looking at and seeing through art and how it is reproduced and consumed. Exclusively based on photographs and rendered in a photorealist manner, Cabigting's self-referential works also comment on the social construction of art, the dissemination of images and the role of photography in shaping how we look at art. In Conditions of the Feminine, she departs from her more familiar representations of iconic modern and conceptual works. The work instead gazes on the older tradition of classical art, subconsciously questioning its depictions of sexual difference, femininity, and other symbolic representations of gender.