REVIEW: Authoring Allure by Erica McKeehen at The Martin
"Secret Mermaid at Her Kitchen Table, 2022" by Erica McKeehen. Image courtesy the artist and The Martin Chicago.
REVIEW Authoring Allure by Erica McKeehen
March 4 - 19, 2022
The Martin Chicago
2500 Chicago Ave.,
Chicago, Illinois 60622
By mo santiago
Erica McKeehen’s AUTHORING ALLURE is a visual invitation to explore sexuality, growth, identity. Through the lens of portraiture. She captures the vibrancy of burlesque performers and sex workers in their homes and shares the joys and realities of the freelance artist life, doing it all, and dealing with shame. McKeehen says “through my work in burlesque … I have learned to not only love my body but discover the strength and satisfaction of expressing my sexuality proudly.” Her journey of discovery as a burlesque performer started around thirty and in her own words, “I started to honor what set me apart from others instead of focusing on how I didn’t “fit in” to society’s ideas of what it means to be a glamorous woman.” What I admire most about her portraiture is the aliveness every image inspires that you can feel from across the room. McKeehen distills every performer, plays with light and manages to capture an unquestionable moment of breath allowing us to experience this gallery as if we’re standing beside her at the snap of the camera.
McKeehen further welcomes audience members “to consider complex realities that are perhaps outside their own” and deconstruct their ideas around burlesque and sex work through her panel, DISCUSSING ALLURE. This panel pursued the performers and their journeys from WWE and classical music to “divorcing from patriarchal pressures and shame to sexual and personal freedom.” (NYXon) Artists, burlesque performers and sex workers Miss NYXon (she/her), Secret Mermaid (she/her) and Lavender Vyxn (she/they) made room for conversations on sexuality, liberation and celebration through their art, and by incorporating culture into performing. Lavender touched on the importance of supporting Black trans sex workers displaced at the bottom of the “whore-archy” by the image of glamorized and socially acceptable sex workers and perfomers like Dita Von Tease. The panelists called out one’s crude ability to proclaim “but I’m not a sex worker!” and distance themselves from dancing while collecting praise for taking a pole or burlesque class. The boundaries created further stigmatize and criminalize sex work as well as erase safe virtual and physical spaces for performers to work, connect and create community.
AUTHORING ALLURE is a look into a performer's unfettered growth that comes with honoring craft and self while pursuing their passion. We as viewers are invited to learn through sharing personal space and understand the perspectives of artists on the fringe of society. Erica McKeehen has done what many photographers and artists miss, and that is to celebrate her community as a visual storyteller. Curator Whitney LaMora has not only supported this project and given space for these images, but allowed room for conversations outside of society's norms of burlesque performers and sex workers.
More of ALLURE can be seen on Erica’s website, and at WITNESSING ALLURE a night of burlesque featuring dancers from the project at Dorothy Downstairs this St. Patrick’s Day.
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