ARTWORK TEXT

‘Morfologia Externa’ (External Morphologies) was an exhibition of portraits of trans women in Mexico City. The title refers to a series named after butterflies.

Portraits are always as much about the artist as the model, they are a dialogue, and with these images I show my models as I see them - proud, noble, and beautiful.

Personally I have always been an outsider, have spent my adult life fighting categorisation, and I always tend to know people out of the mainstream. I’m also lazy - I cannot force myself to do something I am not inherently interested in. So I make portraits of people I like. People I am interested in. People I am relaxed around.

Defiant, self made, spirited - my models are rockstars (see The Album Cover collection)

Honesty and sincerity is the foundation to any communication, and mutual frustrations experienced by my models and myself led us to make pieces like Mother (a window and a mirror) and ‘Why believe in god when you can believe in me’. To be more specific: There are some (non-trans) people who consider themselves guardians of all things Trans, while at the same time not accepting, in practice, their gender identity. These attitudes have been frustrating to me and disheartening to some of my models. (It’s difficult to explain to a trans woman that someone has decided her portrait cannot be shown because it was made by a ‘straight’ man.) ... this disinheriting trans women their female identity is a cruel twist played by those who profess to be their allies.

Anyway....

From the beginning two things were important- the images had to be accessible to people who might otherwise feel uncomfortable with the subject (if art can’t build bridges, what can?) and also I wanted the pieces to be originals - not just digital prints.

The photographic and the tactile, the digital and the organic, stages of consideration for the viewer: everything is layers.

The starting point for these portraits is photography, both of my subjects and of textures on the walls around Mexico City, I then combine these photographic elements digitally to create what I consider captures the 'moment' - a mixture of the subject's personality and mine, the personal connection between us. As a photographer I'm competent but I have two decades of experience working as a digital artist, so it is in the computer that I have the most control over the image. Someone like Annie Leibovitz can probably capture someone in one click of the shutter, but I need to spend some time in the computer to get to that point. I then work with the image to make the most beautiful thing I've ever made - and the next stage is to print up this digital image and destroy it. Really. I print it up large scale, and paint and collage upon it - to the point that I start freaking out, and thinking 'Oh god this is a catastrophe, I don't know what I'm doing!' - and it's important to reach that point - on the verge of panic - and then I have to work the image back to make it something that exceeds what I thought was possible, more beautiful than I could have imagined. So it's a roller coaster ride. A journey. Each piece is like that - if you don't have that stage of panic, then it's no longer art - it becomes just 'design' ... and you're cheating your subject really. The pieces are portraits - and the mood of the moment must come through - the model's personality, yours, and of the moment. You have to be honest, and to do that you have to put yourself out of your comfort zone - and for me, that's out of the computer.

You might think you can tell, when looking at a finished piece, where one technique ends and another begins - what is digital and what is paint or collage - but when you look closely it's not so clear. And this blurring of definition echoes my thoughts regarding identity - for me it's the individual that counts, not technical distinctions.

One thing you learn as a visual artist is that there is no such thing as a boundary between black and white, there is only a transition of greys, ever more tones revealing themselves the deeper one looks, In case you don’t get the analogy, I hope to encourage you to see the whole picture, not to get trapped into trying to categorise what you perceive as differences.

MATT WILLIS-JONES, MEXICO CITY, 2018

Introducing one of my models, Ivanna, at External Morphologies

invite for unveiling at Capitan Gallo (Mexico City)

WHY BELIEVE IN GOD WHEN YOU CAN BELIEVE IN ME?
A portrait of Terry Holiday

Terry Holiday selfie with Lynda Moore Orozco (right) in front of her portrait 'Why Believe In God When You Can Believe In Me?'

Lynda Moore Orozco, getting dizzy upstairs at my exhibit at Capitan Gallo

EXHIBITIONS IN MEXICO CITY

14/06/2018 - 23/07/18 - Capitan Gallo - Solo show: 'Why Believe in God When You Can Believe in Me?'
22/03/2018 - 22/05/2018 - OTRA Art - Solo show: 'External Morphology'
01/03/2018 - 21/03/2018 - Galeria Aguafuerte
08/02/2018 - 27/02/2018 - Galeria Aguafuerte
19/02/2018 - 31/02/2018 - Galeria 665
12/01/2018 - 22/01/2018- Galeria Aguafuerte
12/12/2017 - 23/12/2017- Galeria Aguafuerte

LINK TO PAST WORK: 1997 - 2013 (London, Chicago, Oslo)