JULIE GLICENSTAJN

Life changed for Julie Glicenstajn when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2017. Intensive and invasive surgery was followed by months of difficult recovery and physical rehabilitation, combined with a mixture of both fear and hope of what life might have to offer next for the then sixteen-year-old. The memories of this period are carried by Glicenstajn, both physically and emotionally. raw visualizes Glicenstajn’s movement toward catharsis, a movement of pain and healing, during an especially dark period of life. During the creation of this work, the artist has taken on the task of challenging hardened ideas of traditional feminine beauty, and having to navigate these questions through a world with very narrow definitions of womanhood.

Growing up in Brazil, Glicenstajn recounts living in a culture where women were relegated to exist within very traditional categories, leaving little room for those with expressions outside of the gender binary. After receiving an acceptance to art school two years after her surgery, she found herself wanting to investigate these ideas, especially in relation to her own body. She was further curious about the impact of asking such questions on her identity. In her art, Glicenstajn is interested in challenging the idea that a woman can be narrowly defined by biology; the artist explores the moveable definitions of what it means to be a woman, and who is allowed to explicate or expunge those boundaries.

Glicenstajn decided to contribute to this conversation with her art. As a means to process her vulnerability and contribute to this conversation, Glicenstajn began the process of making this work by rolling red block printing ink onto her body and imprinting her physicality onto tracing paper and canvas. The red ink represents bloodshed, and the cotton materials represent the flesh being wounded and undergoing physical trauma. She then used these corporeal impressions to create a unique and striking composition along a long sheet of canvas. The work’s large scale enables its viewer to reckon with the enormity, fragility, and ultimate tenuousness of navigating physical trauma.

With raw, Glicenstajn links trauma and identity, body and expression, and reminds us that they do not exist separately from one another. What results from the artist’s investigations is an autobiographical representation of the body as a sort of shrine to the survival of the female self.