Previously on View: Jenna Gribbon

[Aimee Ng, Curator]

Jenna Gribbon’s What Am I Doing Here? I Should Ask You the Same engages with the 16th-century portrait by Hans Holbein in this room. Here is the artist describing how Holbein’s art inspires her, and the themes she explores in her painting.

[Jenna Gribbon, Artist]

When we encounter a portrait in a museum, our thoughts often turn immediately to who the subject is, and what made them special enough to be enshrined in that rarified space. My work tends to be about positioning the viewer into a place of self-consciousness of their consumption of an image of another person’s body or intimate moment. I wanted my painting entitled What Am I Doing Here? I Should Ask You the Same to empower my subject, who is my partner Mackenzie, and put her in a position to question your questioning of her. Unlike Holbein’s portraits of Sir Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, who turned toward each other in the Frick’s hanging, offering us their profiles, Mackenzie greets us head on, her expression indicating that we’re intruding. The title is also a reference to my own feelings about being “allowed” to show at the Frick. Growing up in East Tennessee, I didn’t have access to museums, and I fantasized about being able to see paintings in real life. I couldn’t imagine seeing one painting of the caliber of anything in the Frick’s collection, and I never imagined a place where there would be so many. For me, museums are still aspirational places where I feel lucky to visit, much less exhibit, and that’s without even considering that the Frick houses so few women artists. This reality moves the aspirational to the realm of completely unattainable, and my subject’s face reflects my own skepticism. Holbein’s subjects are depicted with legible status symbols that signal power and social status—essentially their right to be featured in the painting. One thing I love about Holbein is the way he paints each object and surface so separately and with such potency that they are like talismans each holding their own discreet powers. I decided to play up these seductive features to the level of camp—camp being a cornerstone of the queer aesthetic historically. There’s not just one or two kinds of velvet, but three, and not just one opulent ring, but six, and all of this humorously contrasts with the subdued domestic setting of the home I share with my partner, the only details of which you’re privy to are our uncovered radiator and the door from which she bars your entry. And knowing that Sir Thomas More and his beautifully velvet sleeves so deftly highlighted would be greatly missed by Frick visitors, I wanted to reference that uncanny tactility, though my highlights emphasize a very different part of my subject’s anatomy. 

[Aimee Ng, Curator]

The installation is part of the series Living Histories: Queer Views and Old Masters, and will be on view until May 2022.