Ileana Tejada

Region: MFA Annual

Website: http://www.ileanatejada.com/

City / State: San Francisco, CA

My body contradicts pop aesthetics of beauty. It is difficult for women such as myself, who oppose gender conformity, to exist. This is especially true when one’s own body refuses to conform— when the physicality of the body itself contradicts existing gender and sexual conventions.

Performing through different personas in my work, I examine hybrid bodies. Rather than male vs. female, child vs. adult, and straight vs. queer, I am a man, a woman, and a child all at the same time. I lift white men up, literally and in opposition to the rules that have been set before me. As a woman of color, this presents a particularly powerful opportunity. I offer my strengths, my vulnerabilities.