REVIEW: What Else Do You Want from Me? Questioning Unrealistic Expectations on Female Resilience with Rebecca Drolen’s “Unstable Entity” at Filter Space

Unstable Entity installation view. Image courtesy Filter Space.

REVIEW
Unstable Entity
Filter Space
1821 W Hubbard St, Suite 207
Chicago, IL 60622
August 11th - September 30, 2023

By Xiao daCunha

It’s surprising how many hats women were expected to wear: mothers, daughters, sisters, partners, coworkers, community members … And somehow, the world doesn’t think this long list of titles automatically suggests debilitating distress and anxiety.

She’s weak.

She’s hysterical.

She’s overreacting.

In a society overly tolerant of men, women were scrutinized under the magnifying glass. We are not allowed to break.

Rarely do we hear the silent scream behind a firm lady: what else do you want from me?

On view at Filter Photo through September 30, Unstable Entity features a juxtaposition of structure and figure photographs that interrogate our society’s unsettled standards on “strong women.” In this solo exhibition, Rebecca Drolen focuses her camera on physical bodily forms and ad-hoc assemblages using common building materials that maintain tenuous balances, seconds away from a total collapse. These collaged forms meditate the female body as architecture and invite the viewers to reflect on the stamina and resilience required for a woman to maintain mental and physical wellness in a world filled with intimidation, stereotypes, sexuality, and anticipations.

Based in Arkansas, Rebecca Drolen is an artist and educator exploring how contemporary photography takes form through incorporating built spaces, assemblage, and performance. By doing so, she visualizes how individuals assemble their identities and the gendered expectations of female bodies. In Unstable Entity, Drolen played with balancing and tipping points to symbolize culturally unstable expectations of female resilience, physically and mentally.

Figure 009: Pause, 2021 – 2023. Archival pigment print on vinyl. Framed archival pigment print, cinder blocks. Image courtesy of Xiao daCunha.

The exhibition is composed of three types of photographs. Images of female bodybuilders were the archetypes, representing the human body’s maximized strength and physicality. The artist’s performances of dance and yoga movements require more delicate displays of strength, such as intricate muscle control, balancing, and tender elegance, yet demand just as much stamina for proper delivery. Finally, the assemblages of planks, wood blocks, cinder blocks, and other found construction materials put the challenge behind female stability into perspective as viewers wondered how these objects could balance against each other in such delicate forms.

In Figure 009: Pause, Drolen presented a built structure and a human form. The assemblage balances thin wood sheets naturally folded and draped over two tripods and a cinder block with the impression that they would drop at any moment. Meanwhile, the artist in the photo carefully balances her body in a yoga pose, her soft body touching the cinderblock’s rough edges. Looking away from the camera, she holds what appears to be the shutter control cord in her hand.

Take one glance, and you’re sure to gasp: that cannot be comfortable. Yet, aren’t many women walking in heels that deform their feet and wearing spandexes that compress their organs to maintain a balanced form? Why do we only notice the discomfort when it’s dramatically amplified in a gallery?

Figure 010: Resolute, 2023. Looped video with wood casing. Image courtesy of Xiao daCunha.

In addition to suspended stability, many pieces in the exhibition highlighted the constant change of situation and structure, using movement to explore the constant strength and resilience women are expected to have.

In Figure 010: Resolute, Drolen repeatedly stepped on and off a cloth strip hanging above a mirror. We see the movement upfront and in reverse, above and under, while reminded of the unspoken risk of the mirror shattering if the artist falls. In Figure 001: Stabilize, a print of stacked triangular wood blocks is elevated onto two cinder blocks. On the wall, a looped video shows the artist pulling blocks away one by one without disturbing the structure as if she were playing a game of Jenga. To the right, a print shows enlarged details of the stack of wooden triangles, highlighting the delicate balance holding the structure together. Some triangles are balanced point-to-point, and any vibration could lead to an avalanche.

The underlying catastrophe in both pieces questions the illogics behind contemporary femininity requirements, and the challenging movements of adjusting the blocks or standing on the rope is exactly how being a woman feels.

You want to stop, but you can’t. Like the looped videos, women are forced to endlessly adapt and rebalance. There is no beginning, nor is there an end. All we can do is get by and occasionally ask the world: what else do you want from us?

Figure 001: Stabilize, 2023 (partial). Archival pigment print on wood panel. Archival pigment print on vinyl. Looped video with wood casing. Framed Archival pigment print. Image courtesy of Xiao daCunha.

Overall, Unstable Entity at Filter Space is not what you typically would expect in an exhibition focusing on female identities, and the exploration of physical optimization and female identity weaves together a sophisticated narrative telling the multifaceted expectations placed upon contemporary women.

Be strong but tender. Be firm but gentle.

Be a fearless mother but an obedient daughter. Be a fearless warrior but also a nurturing gardener.

Women are expected to wear a thousand masks, hold a thousand forms, and excel at all aspects. The bars for what makes a good woman kept rising higher as we maintained our balances standing up to par. Falling is not an option. The structure will crumble. The mirror will break.

So we hold our poses as beautiful yet unstable entities.

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