2022 Senior Exhibition Artists

Alissa Taxiera

Art + Design: Photography

About Alissa Taxiera

Alissa Taxiera is a photographer and designer based in Massachusetts. She received her B.F.A. in Photography from the College of Visual and Performing Arts University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 2022 and will receive a second B.F.A. in Graphic Design in 2023. She explores feminist concepts through the lens of western art history.

Statement

I am very interested in feminism and art history. I am also an admirer of famous paintings throughout world history. I am intrigued with the way women have been presented in paintings by men compared to women throughout art history. Mostly women are portrayed by men as beautiful and obedient decorative objects, posed in submissive positions within domestic environments. However, there are some exceptions where women were painted carrying out violent actions; or where women painted themselves in a powerful way.

I recreate and reference many of these paintings of women within my own photographs. I have constructed scenes and digitally added and subtracted various elements; making the image feel like an isolated world that only exists within the frame of the photograph. I want indications of both the past and current eras to be apparent. Props, lighting, and the subject are all very important factors in this series. My goal is to parody, as well as make my own statement on how the roles of women has changed throughout society between the times these paintings were made, until now.

The paintings I chose to work with are predominately those by western painters; those are what I have been most exposed to during my education. Some of my influences are Tom Hunter, who recreated the character of Hamlet’s Ophelia in his photograph Ophelia; as well as Eugenio Recuenco, who did a project transforming models into Picasso paintings and then photographing them.