JTF (just the facts): A total of 22 photographic collages, framed in black and unmatted, and hung/displayed against white walls in the main gallery space and behind the desk. (Installation shots below.)

The following works are included in the show:

• 8 collage on paper, 2024, sized roughly 17×14, 18×14, 21×19, 21×20, 22×20, 24×20, 26×20 inches
• 2 collage on paper, 2022, 2023, sized 32×32 inches
• 12 collage on paper, 2023, sized 7×5 inches

Comments/Context: Idealized feminine beauty, often as seen by men, has long been a central subject of art, reaching all the way back to ancient fertility fetishes and sculptures of goddesses, angels, and other deities of antiquity. And while art forms have changed and standards of beauty have evolved over time, these idealizations remain firmly embedded in our cultural fabric, as seen today in our own ubiquitous images of fashion and glamour models and celebrities.

For those artists that want to challenge, or redirect, the impact of these pervasive visual influences, photocollage has often provided a pliable medium for rethinking and recontextualizing notions of beauty. Simply through the physical act of cutting and pasting, artists can extract, isolate, and re-present examples of feminine ideals, thereby adding overt feminist commentary and correction to photographs and images that may have otherwise been taken for granted.

As seen here in a selection of recent projects, Eva Lake doesn’t seem intent on using contemporary photocollage as a way to undermine or de-legitimize the feminine ideals of old. Instead, she seems to want to expand their implicit boundaries, using existing imagery as a foundation for embellishing and amplifying feminine beauty in ever broader ways. Her show is titled “Because She’s Worth It”, a nod to a 1970s era L’Oreal branding campaign that was rooted in female agency, autonomy, and self-worth, and the moniker feels altogether appropriate, as Lake’s collages are all about re-imagining (and expanding) modern notions of feminine value and power.

Throughout human history, crowns, garlands, headdresses, and piled up hair have been used to signify status and individuality, and many of Lake’s strongest collages run with this idea in creative ways. To be fair, she’s not the only one who has been exploring this idea of late; Lorna Simpson and Helina Metaferia have both explored head-covering collages in the past few years, but Lake’s works have a degree of contagious optimism that is somewhat different. Starting with a fashionable female face of one kind or another, Lake has crafted various kinds of unexpectedly glamorous helmets and hair-replacements, using colorful gemstones, crystals, and even geometric skyscrapers as decorative items. In other works, she has reached further into the past for her inspiration, building helmets from aggregations of ancient Egyptian sculpture, Greek ceramics, and even a few saints and religious figures found in Giotto’s frescoes. Her results are consistently bold and empowering, her warrior women adorned and protected by historic beauty in all kinds of forms.

The smaller collages in Lake’s series “The Museum” take a different approach, actively collapsing past and present into the same artistic moment. Each collage begins with an ancient female statue (in black and white), which then “wears” more modern fashions (in color), almost like paper dolls with various interchangeable outfits. In this way, ancient idealized women with sculpted hair and flowing drapery are transformed by black dresses, ball gowns, pants suits, sweaters, and floral prints, the chronologies and time-period signifiers intermingled and updated. Lake does a smart job of matching poses and creating contrasts, leading to clever pairings and frictions.

Two larger gridded works from Lake’s 2023 project “Some Girls” play with still other feminine juxtapositions. One work embeds female faces in the sides of buildings, merging watchful eyes, lips, and noses with towering architecture; the faces seem to enliven the buildings with glamour and allure, making the skyscrapers less overtly severe. In another, female faces are intermingled with brightly colored cactus flowers, each one a unique specimen of natural beauty, a few with visible thorns that balance the invitingly showy blossoms. In both works, Lake creates taxonomies, where the introduction of female features reorients the usual visual comparisons.

In an age where software-based image manipulation has become so easy, it’s intriguing to see meticulous physical photocollage continue to be an active vehicle for so many contemporary artists. Lake’s approach feels centered in strength and confidence, and that consistent positivity leads to a collective sense of uplift. And while Lake’s collages don’t bite as hard as others that are more overtly critiquing the legacies of the male gaze, they still have a place in the larger dialogue, particularly as examples of women seeing women with buoyancy and complexity.

Collector’s POV: The collages in this show range in price from $250 to $5600, based on size. Lake’s work has little secondary market history at this point, so gallery retail remains the best option for those collectors interested in following up.