Ad Feminam: Martine Gutierrez and the Language of Advertising

Martine Gutierrez (b. Apr. 16, 1989, Berkeley, CA) is a Guatemalan American artist, a trans woman of Indigenous Maya descent, and the cover girl of artworks that pass as advertisements. At the age of thirty- four, her billboards, bus shelter ads, and fashion magazine spreads have caught the attention of major media outlets. Often branded as a “Latinx artist,” it is striking that the media never discusses Gutierrez in relation to other Latina/x artists. In this paper, I situate Gutierrez within a lineage of Latina/x and Chicana/x artist-activists, such as Ester Hernández (b. 1944, Dinuba, CA) and Patssi Valdez (b. 1951, East Los Angeles, CA). I draw on cultural theorists, such as Chela Sandoval, to consider how Gutierrez’s glamorous adaptations of mass media form part of an ongoing liberatory practice, one that uses art to combat the idealization of whiteness, critique gender norms, and call out systemic racism.