In her first solo show "Poética de Confrontació", Arale Reartes brings together three photographic series: Mechanics of a Female Body, Object/Subject and Armour: Mise en Abyme. Through self-portraiture and staged environments, the works reflect the ways in which women are compelled or forced to develop a constant awareness of their bodies and their presence within different social contexts.

In her work, the female body appears not only as a subject, but as a site of negotiation between the self and the social structures that shape perception. While men rarely have to consider their appearances in the same persistent way, women often move through the world with an acute consciousness of how they are seen, judged and, most importantly, interpreted. Her thorough approach questions why this awareness becomes a necessary survival mechanism.

Mechanics of a Female Body reflects on the cyclical nature of the female body and the tension between these rhythms and a social system built around linear productivity and male-dominant structures. Originally produced for Lampoon Magazine, the series presents the four hormonal phases as mechanical states, revealing the body as a complex system that operates according to its own logic and nature. At the same time, the body is situated within a work environment, where the demands of the office, understood as a space shaped by capitalism and patriarchal norms, intensify this tension, exposing the friction between biological cycles and imposed structures of productivity.

In Object/Subject, the office becomes a symbolic environment where capitalism and patriarchy converge. Everyday desk objects intervene in the artist’s self-portraits, functioning as metaphors for the subtle forms of control and repression in corporate spaces. The absence of the objects themselves, present only through their function and text, echoes the invisible structures that regulate behavior and perception.

In Armour: Mise en Abyme, the self-portrait turns into a recursive image. Repetition causes the figure to progressively lose definition and strength, suggesting processes of erasure and invisibility. The room's "armour" serves as both protection and imprisonment, implying the coping mechanisms women employ to deal with situations that continuously cast doubt on their identity and legitimacy.

Together, the three series form a reflection on visibility, perception, and the mechanisms of self-awareness imposed on the female mind and body. The recurrence of the office as a conceptual and physical space acts as a connective thread between the works, reinforcing its role as a site where these tensions are not only produced but normalized. The works ultimately ask a simple but persistent question: Why are women expected to carry such a constant responsibility for how they are perceived?

——————————

Text by Joanne Sarkis