Burt Reynolds
Alison Bremner | Acrylic paint on yellow cedar paddle | 35" x 6" x 1" | 2017
Created in response to the male gaze present in the commercial Northwest Coast art market. Sexualized works produced under the guise of honoring women are disjointed — honoring only the young and conventionally attractive, acknowledging the aesthetics of women while ignoring the weight they carry. The weight of culture, of raising children, of a whole movement named after how many go missing.
Tlingit artist Alison Bremner chose the famous Cosmopolitan centerfold image of Burt Reynolds because it is cheeky in every sense of the word. Reynolds is knowingly objectifying himself, lounging on a bearskin rug surrounded by ringlets of smoke.
Collection of the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire