At the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, an audacious installation by Christina A. West called “Strut” left some early visitors feeling uneasy — which was the point.
“She’s really pushing the boundaries,” says Beth Ann Gerstein, executive director of the museum, who invited West to present an exhibition that opened this fall with a live model. “I can’t tell you how many people told me how uncomfortable they were with the guy.”
West is a ceramic artist known for her explorations of the human form in provocative ways. At the museum, two of her ceramic stumps, or armatures, sit several feet high, both a fleshy pink with streaks of white and red. On opening day of the exhibition, a nude model in his late 40s clambered on each ceramic sculpture and struck a series of poses — kneeling, sprawling, walking in what West calls a “strut” pose.
“I am a fan of awkwardness in my work,” West said in a phone interview. “So much of the representations that we see in classical sculpture are so beautiful, with so much grace and symmetry. I’ve always wanted to counter that. The idealism that I’ve seen in historical representations of the body doesn’t feel real to me.”
West got her bachelor’s in fine arts from Siena Heights University in Adrian, Mich., in 2003 and her master’s in fine arts from Alfred University in Alfred, N.Y., in 2006. She taught art at Georgia State University from 2009 to 2022 before moving to the art department at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Often, her work deals with the human form in dysmorphic ways, with faces that have been sliced away or figures painted stark red and white.
West has given some thought as to why she does what she does.
“I think it comes partially from my background as an athlete,” she said. “ I was a competitive runner in high school and in college, and so I spent a lot of time training and having sore muscles and thinking about my body mechanics.” Another factor is “just having extreme social anxiety for a long, long time. People were fascinating to me, but also scary. I would kind of clam up around people because my brain would short-circuit.”
While fascinated with the body, West didn’t want to create yet more female nudes, so ubiquitous in the history of art. Instead, given the sculptural tradition of heroic men posed against a pedestal, and as a flip of the male gaze, she wanted “Strut” to re-examine men’s bodies and their positions of power.
Gerstein had seen West’s installations in other cities and watched her career grow.
“I just always find her work intriguing,” Gerstein said during a visit to the museum’s storage area to see two West artworks the museum owns: “Head First,” a 2013 sculpture of a pink, pregnant woman lying on her side, and a piece from her 2006 “Crouching” series depicting a man crouching in oversize boots.
The “Strut” show includes photographs showing close-ups of the nude male body, as well as two video monitors showing two models posing on West’s sculptures.
“I like the fact that they’re a little creepy,” Gerstein said of West’s work, including her color choices. “I like things that make you a little uncomfortable, because then you have to think about, well, why does it make you uncomfortable?”
