GINA OSTERLOH:
HER DEMILITARIZED ZONE/IMAGE WITHOUT WEAPON

APRIL 14 – SEPTEMBER 10, 2023

Her Demilitarized Zone: Image Without Weapon  presents the work of Filipino-American interdisciplinary artist Gina Osterloh. Based in Columbus, Ohio, Osterloh works primarily with lens-based media to create abstractions of performance that question how social constructs affect visual perception.This exhibition introduces a new image and text works that confront portraiture’s inability to resist preconceived notions of identity that society projects onto the body–such as race, gender, and sexuality.

In the feminist tradition of artists such as Martha Rosler and Barbara Kruger, Osterloh uses photographic strategies such as stark black-and-white images combined with text to address structures of power, control, war, profit-based culture, the body, and gender. Through a combination of text, images, and metal sculpture, Osterloh directly addresses gender and war, as well as the ideological weaponization of visuality and culture created through vision and images. The exhibition demonstrates the artists’ ability to create experiences of pause, where the viewer is invited to loosen the ego’s grip and the familiarity of control and power.

Her Demilitarized Zone: Image Without Weapon  is inspired by the artist’s experience living through the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when oppressive rhetoric resulted in an increase in hate crimes against Asians and Asian Americans in the United States. To cope with the new reality of this violence, Osterloh created a photo-portrait, Mirror Woman. This portrait exercise has expanded into the multidisciplinary series engaging viewers in the contradictions between borders and boundaries, the self, and other. It supposes that imperialism and nationhood have a lasting effect on the body as a site of conquest. Her Demilitarized Zone  addresses the contested areas of the body intertwined with the militarization of images, language, and ideologies.

Her Demilitarized Zone: Image Without Weapon  is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit with major support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Additional support has been provided through The Ohio State University Arts & Humanities Completion Grant program.

Image: Gina Osterloh, Holding Zero, #1, 2020. Archival Pigment Print. Courtesy of the artist, Higher Pictures Generation New York, and Silverlens Manila and New York.