MEXICO CITY, MEXICO. Inside the huge palace, thousands of people admired the nude picture of the young woman. Hundreds of brushstrokes give life to the pillows where he lies. The silence that usually surrounds him is broken when he speaks to a group of visitors for the first time in 100 years.
“Comfortable and elegant, right? Or so it seems. But I’m on my elbow for hours. Tricks of the trade,” says Liz, who prefers to speak only by her first name, giving a nod to the model for the 1920s painting Desnudo Barroco by Mexican artist German Gedovius. The name of the model is not known.
For three days in August 2022, the National Museum of Art in Mexico City presented “Obras al desnudo” (“Nude Works”), where models gave life and voice to the women depicted in the works of its collection.
In front of each piece, a model poses in a flesh-toned trouser that matches the pose of the model in the painting. As visitors gathered in front of the piece, a recording was played, reciting what today’s models imagined were the thoughts of their predecessors.
“It was a fantasy,” says Phryne, an art model who helped conceive and participate in the exhibit. “If we could say that they still treat us badly, what would they do?” Rebellion of models. Each of them came out of the pictures to raise their voice and complain.”
Obras al desnudo is the brainchild of the Movimiento de Modelos de Arte en Resistencia, an activist collective of art models founded in 2022 by Frine and several colleagues.
In the past year, the movement has been successful in advocating for fair wages and ensuring that art studios adopt safety protocols developed by the group. But his ambitions are bigger. she wants modeling to be respected and recognized as art.
“We are the workers of the art world,” says the movement’s manifesto. “We are the ones that historical accounts and museum labels say nothing about. In every garden, in every fountain, in most pictures are our faces, our bodies, our feelings, our strength. … We are the nameless bodies invading the city.”
Its safety protocols, or Reglamento de Interacción con Modelos (Rules for Interacting with Models), are as basic as banning workshop participants from touching, recording or photographing models, or making comments about their physical appearance.
“You’re old news,” “You look thinner,” and “Nice legs” are some of the comments a model will hear during a typical workday, says Phryne.
“There’s this idea that you can touch female models because they’re objects. … People expect suffering to be a normal part of a model’s job,” says Phryne, who named it after the ancient Greek courtesan and art model Phryne. “The Union of Artists benefits from the fact that female models are not united. Foundations benefit because we don’t say anything when there are abuses.”
“Before [the movement]It wouldn’t have occurred to me to have a fair wage or to have some kind of insurance,” says Liz. He says the studio space was good enough.
For Viridiana López or Viroxz, who has been modeling for over eight years, the salary should be decent and commensurate with the model’s time spent and physical skill level. “We want optimal conditions to do our work, because our bodies are naked. Its area where we put our genitals, our feet, hands and faces should not be dirty.’
“Now I put all my energy into researching the artists who hire me, to get to know who they are, understand their work, and figure out how much to charge them. If a person wants to pay me 3 [Mexican] peso [17 United States cents]then no,” Virocz says.
Isabel Juarez, who has modeled for 13 years, said studios in other Mexican states have asked to adopt the movement’s rules and protocols to prevent abuse.
“I think there’s a constant fear in spaces of breaking the barrier and doing it [things] otherwise,” says Juarez. Noting that making art for a living is inherently uncertain, he goes on to say that those who run the studios know that having female models in their 20s is guaranteed to fill their workshop. “If they bring a 60-year-old man as a model, they will get a third of the attendance. It’s a vicious cycle until people start investing in new ways.”
After an incident of sexual assault at an art academy, Phryne wanted a way to safely pursue her passion for art. She created a workshop called “Morras para Morras” (“Girls for Girls”), a monthly painting session where the model and attendees are all women.
Promoting different body types, Freene says, works as a filter to see what kind of people attend the workshops. “We don’t want to go to the same dirty old people who [are] I’m going to try something with a female model,” he says.
“I’m a thick brunette girl and I love it,” says Liz, who says she always sees thin, blonde women in workshops. “Why aren’t there? [different] the girls? I’d like it to start being me.”
Liz explains how disappointed she is when she sees her body painted differently on contestants’ canvases. “I have been holding my hands in this position for several minutes. Draw them as they are. Draw this part hanging because that’s how my body is,” she says. “Fat has always been synonymous with something that is not beautiful, something lazy. And I feel that when I am photographed in these poses wearing aesthetics, they think: “Oh, yes, she’s good-looking, but she’d be better off if she wasn’t overweight.”
For both Liz and Phryne, these changes minimize the models’ effort during sessions. “It’s very common for them to make us goofy like hentai and be like, ‘That’s not me.’ It is not my body. You don’t see. Are you exaggerating? [some parts] and eliminating others,” says Frain. “The body can do anything. I offer you the power of my body so that we can create together.”
