Grabs Back @ Being Here With You / Estando Aquí contigo - MCASD Museum Of Contemporary Art San Diego 2019

Mely Barragán highlights daily life and popular cultures sites of contradiction in patriarchal and consumerist society. Often working with found images and materials that carry gendered associations, Barragan multiplies signifiers of femininity to scramble stereotypes.

Barragán´s Grabs Back  is more pointed in its subject, offering a response to U.S. President Donald Trump´s boasting of sexual assault on the notorious ¨Access Hollywood¨ tape. The word ¨pussy¨ is surrounded by a bustling arrangement of vintage illustrations – of men, women, and a large poodle- and layered with sequins, fur, a skirt, and painted phallic forms. Additional textual elements – ¨female dog¨, and ¨grabs back¨ – propose an active mode of resistance to forms of indignity and oppression endorsed by those with power.

(excerpt from Museum catalogue)

Mixed media, painting on tapestry cloth, thread, hairy texture, sequins, on stretcher. size 164 X 194 cm.

///////

técnica mixta, pintura sobre tela de tapicería, hilos, peluche, acrílico, lentejuela sobre bastidor. dimensiones 164 X 194 cm. año 2017.