Mary Jane Parker’s piece Camouflaged consists of 35 similar panels (encaustic on wood, each roughly one foot square). The color scheme is an attractive green and pink. Each panel is covered in a random, organic camouflage pattern somehow suggestive of leopard print. Key panels contain line drawings of parts of the body (feet, faces, hands) so that it appears as if two people are facing the viewer and are undressing. These figures are not immediately evident because of the camouflage and the missing parts of each body. The multiple pieces break up the picture plane and add the misleading logic of the grid to the camouflaged effect. Although the people are facing the audience, they have their eyes closed or covered by hands as if they sincerely wish not to be seen. Only their faces, feet and hands (which in each case are either working on unbuttoning) reveal their forms. Camouflaged’s focus on covering the eyes and body raises questions about the function of clothes as camouflage and our peculiar cultural need to see bodies as clothed or undressed but always in some way or another frankly disguised.
Sarah Brewer