Julie Oakes
SheShe: Stylistic Empathy

NOVEMBER 21, 2019 TO JANUARY 12, 2020
Main Gallery

ABOUT

“SheShe: a double affirmation of the feminine - an aesthetic high.”

The origins of the term chi chi may come from chic used by Flaubert in Madame Bovary, chicard being, at the time, current Parisian slang for classy. Italians say fare una bella figura which means 'make a good impression'. Baroness Von Hoyningenheune used chi-chi for an over-the-top 'turn out' that results in an even greater edification, a super impression. SheShe is a channel into focusing perception towards the feminine.

SheShe presents a traditional domestic setting and elevates it to affirm the strength of women. Women have long decorated the home with motifs derived from nature, recognizing nature as the ultimate designer employing combinations of randomness, symmetry, repetition, and effective engineering. Using artistic disciplines that originated in embellishing the home, SheShe claims feminine stylistic empathy through craft, design, and textiles. By phrasing tropes for women within objects designed to be impressive, the feminine vocabulary is raised.

Lucy R. Lippard's The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Essays in Feminist Art challenged the institutionalized sexism of the art world in the 70s by titling a serious discourse after an ornament - pink for a girl, fragile, floaty and kitsch. SheShe reasserts the significance of the domestic setting as an opportunity to beautify and decorate while embedding a powerful message and aesthetic. SheShe is an installation suggesting an interior domestic space.

Julie Oakes uses painting, ceramics, glass, performance, print making, and video to address environmental protectionism, women’s rights, spiritualism, and cultural diversity. She has had solo museum exhibitions in Canada at The Vernon Art Gallery, The Canadian Clay and Glass Museum, The Penticton Art Gallery , The Varley Museum, The Canadian Museum of Northern History, The Alternator Gallery, and RCA Visuals. International solo exhibitions include Rivington Gallery, London, and The Temple Gallery, Nassau, Bahamas. Recent invitational museum group exhibitions include Interwoven, Lodz, Poland, Kanadishe Woken, Germany, and the Anchorage Museum of Art. She holds a Masters in Visual Arts, NYU, and a Masters in Social and Political Science, New School for Social Research, New York. After living in Toronto, Oakes, with Richard Fogarty, moved back to Vernon where they designed and built Headbones Gallery and her studio.

Julie Oakes, Artist