Lorna B. Otero Perez Puerto Rico

Lorna Beatriz Otero (b. 1979) I am a multimedia artist that explores the quotidian experiences of the woman of today; her roles, idiosyncrasies and her moral and civil responsibilities. From a historicist standpoint I delve into the canons of Puerto Rican as well as universal painting to uncover instances in which the struggle that has characterized being a woman is made manifest.
My emerging career is focused on the iconic, the symbolic or significance of customs associated with femininity. In my paintings predominate a formal deconstruction that highlights biographical details (created or real) of the subject, those who are represented moving throughout a space that has been obviously constructed. This space is the platform from whence the view of the forces at work can be better seen, all the madness, the desire, the frustration or satisfaction as well as the unforgiving public sphere of opinions. In my most recent work I seek to explore broad themes; the representation of women in the history of art and the roles that women play in contemporary society. I utilize as symbols the real feminine beauty behind the cosmetic, the fancy dress and social classes. I try to project all the natural and superficial characteristics that society drives you to assume. To do this I employ the mediums of painting, photography and sculptural installations, all to better illustrate and emphasize true feminine beauty and womanhood. In this proposal I include five bodies of work, including the series titled Monster Women, CHIComaticayans, Multiple Personality Disorder Series, Campechanas and the Kate Mythologies. These series are connected in my initially exposed desire to explore the female social form and the representation of different angles and the nature of that aspect of life. An example of this is the series titled Monster Women, which is a performance work that has been photographically documented that speaks of mysterious and fictitious characters such as the vampire, the monster from Frankenstein, the werewolf, the mummy and the classical green witch. I appropriate their physical traits and personalities and integrate them in a mainstream work environment for them to try to blend in. The idea is to project and reflect so that we can see how we see each other and how we behave in our daily lives. Sometimes we are like these beings, benevolent or malevolent according to the circumstances. We are all driven by our ambitions, created by society and the corporate sphere and fed to us through the mass media. The result is a power driven game of how we should be, how we should behave and how we need to be “the best” according the canon. The CHIComaticayans is a body of work that includes both sculpture and painting that appropriates the image of the Onomaticayans, characters from the blockbuster film Avatar. The movie plot narrates the struggle for power and the human intervention in the lives of these extraterrestrial beings that are sought and hunted to turn their way of life and their environment into a lucrative site for mining. My interpretation of the possible outcome for these beings, had they failed to liberate themselves from foreign human interests, is an Onomaticayan contaminated by our “chic” lifestyle. Its resulting image is a projection of their industrialization and commercialization and their manipulation through the same mass media that shapes human activity today. The series titled Multiple Personality Disorder is also a performance work documented in photography of what appear to be seven women, represented by myself, each with different styles, personalities, and professions. Each lives in a world, whether real or imaginary, where they feel incomplete and misunderstood. This body of work presents the possible double or even multiple numbers of lives women can sometimes lead simultaneously, whether it is because of social, cultural or personal convention. It portrays the preoccupation of how we project ourselves onto the world with all the demands made from women; how women must be as professional and compete with the world and other women in order to reach that prized and absurd state of sexual and aesthetic perfection. The series titled Campechanas is a series of paintings utilizing textiles and a variety of painting techniques. In this series I seek to liberate these women in Jose Campeche’s painting, in their time repressed entirely by colonial Puerto Rican societal standards. I project this by altering their dress and intensifying their expression to convey their sexuality and their possible desires to run away from their idiosyncratic routine. In the series titled Kate Mythologies I use painting and glass and bead work over canvas to represent the scandalous myths of the ancient Greek goddesses, their veneration and their clearly capricious behavior. I mean to express the way in which they, through their beauty, created controversy and social upheaval. To do this I juxtapose their ancient myths with the peculiar beauty of another scandalous woman, the super model Kate Moss.