Elle “Take Your Skin Off” at The City Don’t Sleep. (Brooklyn, NYC)

April 29, 2013 ,

Elle’s show on the 4th of May, Take Your Skin Off, is set to release the “ELLE Tattoo Girl” series, featuring hand painted photographs paired with reproductions. The show will explore transformation and the assumption of new identity. Graffiti is all about hiding one’s identity, using an alter ego, a shroud of mystery. On the same token, there is widely spread commodification of the graffiti artist in the public eye. This juxtaposition plays off of contemporary culture’s obsession with advertisement, fame, and the proliferation of image and icon. ELLE is exploiting the idea of notoriety and the visual competition with and collaboration of marketing space. Can someone be notorious just because their icon is everywhere? Because people can identify and have seen it? Is this fame?  


ELLE is graffiti obsessed. In Take Your Skin Off, the artist exposes herself by unveiling the masked persona and identifying herself with her larger-than- life pseudonym. ELLE= ALL WOMEN. ELLE, SHE is represented throughout the city and standing fiercely. SHE is protecting all of the walls and is the equal counterpart of the male ego. Is the work about the female skin and how we choose to represent ourselves? Are we comfortable in “the skins that we are wearing?” Then again, maybe ELLE is just objectifying the woman… is ELLE a woman? Is ELLE a man? What is it with graffiti and the addiction of writing ones name over and over again everywhere? What happens when the lines are crossed and the graffiti writer starts pasting these images everywhere and suddenly it becomes like media/propaganda and advertising combined with street art? Why is this image everywhere?!


ELLE’s show, Take Your Skin Off, will be opening May 4th, from 7-10pm, at The City Don’t Sleep. (410 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11211). DJ Cat King will be spinning and Brooklyn SixPoints Brewery will be sponsoring the show. Come parteeee!
238
138
45

Other Articles You May Like from BSA:

Vermibus Returns to NYC to Dissolve Concepts of Beauty
The emancipation of the proletariat will be at its own hands! Just thought we'd announce something vaguely Marxist on Presidents Day to get your attention, since the masses are awakening to the idea ...
Madrid Diary and the Street : Velasquez, Goya, Borondo, Spy!
Velasquez, the painter of the Spanish Golden Age died here. Along with the mannerist paintings of El Greco, the extravagant baroque of the Flemish Rubens, and the romantic Goya, one can see Velasquez’...
Transforming Tafí Viejo: Argentina’s First International Street Art Festival in Tucumán
The Circuito Mural: Encuentro Internacional de Arte Urbano just wrapped up its first run from October 1 to 5, 2024, in Villa Obrera, Tafí Viejo, Tucumán, Argentina. This aesthetically strong and comm...
Augustine Kofie Remixing Deep Cuts in "Inventory"
Newly re-mixed and sampled soulful works by Augustine Kofie are featured in the “Inventory” show that just opened here in New York at Jonathan Levine this weekend. No, he’s not looking through his sto...
Flying Squirrels and Houston Toads : Louis Masai in Texas and Tennessee
Austin, Texas Austin is proud to plead, “Keep Austin Weird.” Street Artist Louis Masai felt like his recent visit to that Texas city was not the only part of the US that one could call weird – it...

Featured Video | Martin Wong’s “Houston Street”

Recent Articles on BSA