Text and images used by permission.
Eleven
This is Dek Unu Magazine. In Esperanto, dek unu means "eleven." Eleven images from a single artist. Eleven artists in eleven solo issues in each publication year. Dek Unu publishes the work of a new artist-photographer in each issue. The artist's work and words are featured in individual focus as the sole purpose for each issue of the magazine. Unlike other arts and letters magazines which might look for work from a variety of artists to support an editorial staff's theme, at Dek Unu, theme and imagery are always each artist's own.
In this series, She’s Still in There, New York conceptual artist Rachel Feinstein tells a story of the interior lives of women as they navigate the social puzzle presented by traditional overt and unspoken expectations. She considers women’s space in society, their vulnerability and autonomy, the difference between dream and reality, and the ways in which society changes... and doesn’t.
The portfolio mixes still lifes of cliché feminine signifiers: food, jewelry, gowns, high heels, and hair with noir-ish portrait set-ups of faceless women, usually in retreat. Rachel lights each scenario cinematically, with strong sunlight or glaring flash; the saturated colors create images that recall the “storybook” aesthetic of Hollywood’s mid-20th century Technicolor years. As sharply-focused as each image is, there’s a mystery and tension in them, a turbulence of ambivalent nostalgia, sexual satire, and impending, likely unpleasant, surprise. The artist’s stylistic reference to the dream factory is a clear message that beneath the brightly-colored romance, both then and now, there is something darker going on.
It is regrettable, along with a library of stronger adjectives, that Feinstein’s art has become more and more relevant in this year’s United States. Like artists throughout time who have reacted to conflict, oppression, and loss, she sees an extra urgency to her work these days. She says it clearly and best, “With women’s rights being rolled back and empathy for women’s stories fading, I want my work to be a place where those stories are believed, protected, and told honestly.”