What does it mean to challenge portraiture in an age of modernity, and how can typically-labelled Renaissance-style portraiture be challenged within the contemporary world? Janet Werner, an artist/painter from Montreal, QC. has done just that. Known for her exhibitions “Another Perfect Day”, “Too Much Happiness” and “Who's Sorry Now”, Werner forces us to question what the term “portraiture” truly means through a feminist art style, and how a typically generic form of artwork, in our modern world of “selfies” and mass photography, can be transformed into a powerful message of self-reflection and self-worth. We expect portraiture's to merely be a shell of someone's self, but we expect that in the physical sense, and less so in the mental and …show more content…
Yet somehow with all the emptiness, there's so much that fills you as you look through her artwork; a sense of humanity within the confines of clustered, blurred facial features, and animal heads; these create “a sickly discomfort that gathers mass as you move from piece to piece” (Skene, 2010). Her subjects' bodies and faces fold and implode upon themselves, like “subtle slippages of the soul” (Kissick, 2013), and show us the fragility of not only modern culture, but our very lives. Janet Werner's work excels at making viewers feel disturbed and anxious when looking at her works by making her onlookers see and experience what it means to be a female in the modern world; their photoshopped bodies throughout media outlets, their emotions, and the sexuality attached to it all. Through these mediums, she is able to make us feel like we're not looking at “someone's” shell at all, we're looking directly into their