Autumn Ramsey
born 1976
Autumn Ramsey is an American painter who experiments with the symbolism of the female body. On the one hand, Western culture has perceived it an object, and on the other as an irrational being: because of its otherness, dangerous and therefore requiring constant control. Inspired by Gustave Moreau's symbolic painting, Ramsey asks: to what extent her own and other women’s subjectivity has been shaped, unconsciously, as a result of the social and historical definition of the female body? In her paintings, she reinterprets cultural symbols such as the mythical sphinx, a part-woman/woman-like creature. In one of the paintings presented at the exhibition, the sphinx is depicted as an amalgamation of a predatory cat and an angel subjugating the male body. On another one, it has a face of a woman and the body of a monster with gargantuan, animal limbs. The character in the painting depicting the artist also corresponds perfectly to the figure of a woman-monster. Thus, Ramsey's painting can be understood as a subjective interpretation of cultural codes, as a result of which the artist creates her own, affirmative version of the lexicon of feminine otherness.
