Ava Proehl and Kate MacArthur, who both work on the UVA student newspaper, the Cavalier Daily, took a break from their studies to view The Fralin Museum of Art’s “Power Play: Reimagining Representation in Contemporary Photography.” The exhibit displays selected works of five photographers from women’s perspectives: Sarah Maple, Tokie Rome-Taylor, Cara Romero, Martine Gutierrez and Wendy Red Star.
Maple puts Disney princesses in contemporary settings as modern women. Romero’s large portraits show Indigenous women arranged like American Girl dolls in their packages. Tokie Rome-Taylor depicts Black girls dressed to reimagine an alternative past of beauty, wisdom and power. Gutierrez experiments with natural and artificial settings. Red Star shows herself in decorative Native dress with different backgrounds.
“The exhibit is attention-grabbing in a powerful way with these unique stories,” Proehl, a third-year Commerce School student, said. “It calls attention to recognizing women. They’re saying, ‘We’ve faced oppression, we’ve faced being silenced, but we are here, and our stories need to be told.’”