SARA JIMENEZ
Sara Jimenez is a Filipinx-Canadian artist exploring pre-existing narratives of place and lineage through abandoned objects, debris and colonial texts. Through material experimentation Jimenez rearranges elements of her personal collection into collages, sculptures, installations, and videos. In many of these works Jimenez appears nude. The artist is well aware of Instagram’s nudity policy and only posts allusions to fully naked bodies.. As such, her work is not deleted by Instagram because of self censorship. The real question is “are viewers witnessing a less than manifestation of her work?”
The image on the left is indicative of artwork that Jimenez can post to Instagram.
The image on the right is a screenshot of an full artwork that Jimenez is unable to post.
Recently Jimenez received a government sponsored art exhibition. The curator invited her to participate, asking Jimenez to be aware that the organization had a conservative audience and that certain kinds of nudity could be an issue. These boundaries of nudity were vague. Jimenez's work showed highly edited digitized bodies with brief moments of nudity, within a surreal setting with no explicit sexual charge. The organization leaders expressed concern about these images, but again, remained vague about the details. There is an illusive “worry” that a citizen/viewer in a predominantly conservative white town will be scandalized by seeing a naked woman and that subsequently the organization will lose all their funding. Of course nobody says that out loud. The fear of losing funding because of a cis-white majority’s displeasure is endemic to American culture. This attitude is reflected strongly in corporate entities too.
Sadly we live in a world where only the most vocal, angry, persistent artists remain visible and those who are not natural fighters often give into public pressure.
IMAGE CREDIT: All Images Courtesy The Artist, Sara Jimenez, ”…for the view was duplicated there”, 3-channel video, loop (Sound in collaboration with Lau Nau) (2019)