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The Ideal Sex: Social Constructs of Staying with the

Gender Perfection Trouble: Making Kin

in the Chthulucene

This is part of our special feature The Gender of Power. Marriage in Europe,
1400-1800 by
This series by Allie Pohl, Brenda Oelbaum and Craig
Silvana Seidel
LeBlanc highlights societal pressures on sex and gender roles,
Menchi
offering idealized bodies whereby the tall and the slim define
the desirable female, as guns, muscles and sports define the
true man. The three artists presented here lash out against Understanding the
these enforced ideals and question their validity. Beauty can be EU Aid Policy in

found in all body types as the Venus of Willendorf Project, Unpredictable

modeled after an ancient fertility goddess, shows. While Pohl Times

and Oelbaum see patriarchy at fault for the pressures imposed

on the female body, LeBlanc’s work reveals that men are just as The Duel in
much under pressure in a society that considers aggression and European History:
competitiveness as the templates by which a man’s worth is Honour and the
understood. Reign of the
Aristocracy by
–Nicole Shea for EuropeNow
Victor Kiernan

Allie Pohl The Return of

I am interested in critiquing how pop culture, social norms, and Politics, the End of
Merkel? Germany’s
technology effect our society’s desired physical form. We are
New Grand
constantly inundated with images that culturally outline beauty.
Coalition
Often times, these commercially packaged versions of beauty
are simply illusions. My work reflects this repetitive effect,
referencing multiple devices that pressure individuals of both Reconciling Neo-
sexes to strive for an idealized version of “perfection.” liberalism and
Community Based
Beauty has transformed into an attainable product as a result of
Tourism in South
society’s addiction to achieving the ideal image. I created the
Africa: The African
Ideal Woman by digitally enhancing Barbie to fit into Western
Ivory Route
society’s archetype of female measurements: 36-24-36. As an
American cultural icon, born in 1959 at the dawn of the Post-
War consumer culture, Barbie was intended as a toy for young Primavera, an Art
Series
girls, but its ubiquitous presence resulted in a brand that
represents the idea of physical perfection. The symbol used
throughout my Ideal Woman series was developed to question Eurafrica: History of
these social constructs of perfection and the demands made on European
a woman’s body, and to force the viewer to be aware of the Integration,
unattainable nature of this “cookie-cutter” form. Meant as a “Compromise” of

symbol of an anti-perfection, the shape is repeated throughout Decolonization

my work in sculpture, video, installation, and jewelry design.

Peacocking: Since online dating moved to apps, particularly African

Tinder, I chose to explore how men market them themselves to Pentecostals in

women when it is image based. From my research, I created Catholic Europe: An

merit badges, based on the traditional boy-scout badges, Aesthetic Approach

representing the qualities of “ideal masculinity.” I also made

sculptures of mannequin parts from different decades, finished “Eurafrica” is Dead:
in the most popular car color of the corresponding decade, to In Fact, It Never
highlight how contemporary men are also subject to society’s Existed
notions of perfection.

Saving Agu’s Wife

Boys Quarter by
Chukwuma Ndulue

Four poems by
Léopold Sedar
Senghor

A Forgotten Colony:
Equatorial Guinea
and Spain
Ideal Woman: Bed of Roses, porcelain, swarovski crystals, cloth
roses, 9.5 x 5.5 x 3.5 inches, 2015

Peacocking: Abs 1, fiberglass, automotive paint, metal and

wood, 69 x 15.25 x 20.5 inches, 2013

Ideal Woman: Leather and Lace, porcelain, leather, lace,

ribbon, 9.5 x 5.5 x 3.5 inches each, 2014

Los Angeles-based conceptual artist Allie Pohl launched her

IDEAL WOMAN series to challenge social constructions of
perfection. Pohl created the symbol by digitally enhancing
Barbie’s proportions to fit Western society’s ideal female
measurements of 36-24-36. The series has started a
conversation around female empowerment, a redefinition of the
“ideal” and serves as a reminder that every woman is the IDEAL
WOMAN – perfectly imperfect. Pohl’s art work has been
exhibited in galleries and museums across the U.S. including:
Orlando Museum of Art, Art Basel Miami, Dallas Art Fair, Cornell
Museum of Art and the Denver National Airport. Pohl launched
the IDEAL WOMAN jewelry line as a means of making the
avatars powerful message accessible and widespread. IDEAL
WOMAN jewelry has been adorned by celebrities such as Lena
Dunham, Sophia Bush, Rosario Dawson and Jill Soloway and has
been featured in publications such as Vouge, Nylon, Art Slant,
New York Times, LA Times, Paper Magazine, and ELLE.com Allie

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Pohl received a Bachelor of Arts from Hamilton College before

attending Parsons, The New School for Design, in New York City,
where she received an Associates of Applied Science in Graphic
Design. She then went on to receive her MFA in Electronic
Media Arts & Design from the University of Denver.

Brenda Oelbaum

The Venus of Willendorf Project is an intensely personal

response to the lucrative diet industry and a culture obsessed
with being slender at any cost. Weight loss is a battle steeped
in gender politics and patriarchal ideologies around the female
body and sexuality. For most of my adult life, I have fought with
my weight, losing and gaining as I struggled to fit into smaller
clothes and a society that abhors fatness. As a biological
response to years of dieting, my body became bigger and bigger.
Instead of loathing myself, I learned to embrace my size and
raise awareness of the factors that subjugate women into
submitting to an unrealistic ideal of how they should look.
Through the image of this ancient fertility goddess, I honor a
time when the fullness and fecundity of women’s bodies were
celebrated and not hidden.

Photo credit: Amanda Nichol Rogers

Scarsdale, “The Venus of Willendorf Project,” mixed media paper

machè diet books, white flour and water, 36″ x 15″ x 16″, 2010
 Fonda, “The Venus of Willendorf Project,” mixed media paper
machè diet books, white flour and water, 36″ x 15″ x 16″, 2010

Simmons, “The Venus of Willendorf Project,” mixed media paper

machè diet books, white flour and water, 36″ x 15″ x 16″, 2010

Brenda Oelbaum is a conceptual, multi-disciplinary, social

practice artist whose work is deeply rooted in the tenets of
feminism. Oelbaum has been shown internationally, including
South Korea and China, and was included in the book Art in the
Age of Terrorism by Graham Coulter-Smith. Inspired by pop
culture and current events, she finds humor in the odd
juxtapositions that inform her art making. Oelbaum is a
graduate of the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, Canada (
OCADU ) where she studied painting in Florence, Italy, under the
direction of the late Aba Bayefski and received an MA in Gallery
Administration from F.I.T. in New York. She has worked with
such prominent art dealers as Rosa Esman, and Gracie Mansion
in NYC. Currently Oelbaum is the representative for the Feminist
Art Project and a National Member of A.I. R. Gallery in Brooklyn,
New York. She is an avid collector of art, and feels one of the
best ways to support women in the arts is to collect their work.

Craig LeBlanc

Craig Le Blanc’s art practice reveals a long-standing interest in

vulnerability, bravado, ego, loss and façade. In 1996 he began an
extended focus on masculinity, work that examined the burden
of socially constructed ideals upon what it means to be male.
In 2016 Le Blanc redirected this investigation to explore identity
politics more broadly, using confessional narratives that both
parody and celebrate the perpetual reshaping of subjectivity
with his exhibition She Loves Me. He Loves Me Not.

Le Blanc’s works negotiate the tension between protective

veneer and blatant exposure. He creates robust and structured
forms that mirror the gendered stereotypes they allude to such
as aggressivity, virility, competitiveness, while simultaneously
inverting those assumptions. We see this applied in a work like
Piece with its ballet pink colouring diminishing its bravado, or in
On Guard, an over-sized jockstrap—its giant refuge built to
protect the six-foot artist himself. Similarly, in his piece One on
One, two seventy inch replica joysticks representing both
intimacy and competition, and the inherent isolation and
connectivity of romantic union.

Known for craftsmanship and execution, Le Blanc employs

many mediums and technologies in the search for the
appropriate creative solution. He has worked within post-
secondary design education for two decades, exposing him to
methodologies that forever influence his artwork.

On Guard, 2007, Fibreglass, Vinyl, Upholstery Foam, 55″ x 77″ x

28″

One on One, 2010, Steel, Aluminum, 204″ x 68″ x 72″

Form Study 2 (foreground), 2007, MDF, HD Foam, Plaster,

Electrical Cable, Acrylic Urethane, Size: Joysticks 20″ x 20″ x
18″, Size: Stadium 48″ x 48″ x 16″

Piece, 2007, EPS Foam, Steel, Polyurea Hard Coat, Acrylic

Urethane, 46″ x 34″ x 13′

In the mid-nineties Craig Le Blanc studied painting at the Nova

Scotia College of Art and Design until a transformative period
at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. This time,
aligned with peers and the direct influence of Vincent Barré,
Annette Messager and Christian Boltanski, altered Le Blanc’s
perspective toward art making leading him to generate work
wrapped in concept and gender. Le Blanc later received an MFA
in Computational Media Design from the University of
Calgary. Le Blanc operates as The White Studio, a
comprehensive design studio focused on public art, graphic and
object design. He has found success in the public art realm,
creating three large scale pieces from 2010-2016, one of which
(Henri 2010) won an Americans for the Arts/Public Art Network
Year in Review award for 2011. He has exhibited extensively
within Canada and the US and has works in several private,
corporate and municipal collections. He lives and works in
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Nicole Shea ran CenterArts Gallery in Newburgh from 2009-2012

and later incorporated her arts experience into the leadership
training at West Point. In 2015, she founded a large-scale
sculpture walk outside the gates of West Point, which she has
been curating together with the founding members of
Collaborative Concepts in a community effort to revitalize the
area via the arts. She is also Executive Editor of EuropeNow and
Director of the Council for European Studies.

Published on July 6, 2017.

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