exhibitions
Middle Child:
Photographs by Alex Orellana
The Chazen Museum Prize to an Outstanding MFA Student
April 28–June 25 , 2017 | Oscar F. and
Louise Greiner Mayer Gallery
Alex Orellana is the winner of the 2017 Chazen Museum Prize
to an Outstanding MFA Student. Orellana is a third-year MFA
student in the UW–Madison Art Department who received
a BFA in photography from the University of Georgia.
“For transgender people, there is a prevailing narrative that
success entails trading one binary identity for another to pass
as the opposite sex,” says Orellana.
“For this show I’ve made a series of images of myself as
different genders to show that the things we see as inherently
masculine or feminine are arbitrary. I can affect my appearance
to look more like a standard man or woman, but what do
these appearances mean if I can occupy all of them from
a single body? What assumptions am I inviting by making
Alex Orellana (American, b. 1988), Self as Man, and Self as Woman,
2016, archival inkjet print, each 24 x 16 in., courtesy of the artist.
particular aesthetic decisions? And what exactly separates
me from my sister and brother, or my mom and dad?”