Jaimy Gail (b. 1992) grew up in Amsterdam and graduated from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, in 2017. The main focus of her work is questioning the concept of the norm by focusing on the position of women within our normality. She is looking for the limit of the (sub)conscious understanding of the socially accepted, and seeks to push its boundaries. She has produced work for publications such as King Kong Magazine, i-D, VICE, Coeval, and C41 Magazine.
Image 1 to 3 – Vrouwzijn / On Being A Woman (2021 – ongoing)
In her series Vrouwzijn, Gail looks at all of the different shapes a woman can take: powerful, submissive, the mother, the whore. She explores the idea that, whereas men generally have a rigid image, women move across the spectrum, like a shape-shifter. She questions which of these forms is the truth, or whether they are all true. Do women decide which form to take, or is the choice made for them?
Image 4 to 5 – Ongoing Portraits
Ongoing portraits of family and friends.
Image 6 to 10 – Normaal Doen (2017 – 2019)
In Normaal Doen, Gail tests the boundaries of socially acceptable and normal behaviour. What determines what we consider a tolerable image? Is this idea individually determined by nature, or are we all part of a far-reaching, historically and physically determined system of norms and values? Using the medium of photography, inextricably associated with the way in which “the normal” is communicated, Gail studies this fine line. Is the breaking point between the mind that prefers to be open-minded about the unknown, and the internal survival strategy that forces us to classify the (un)known? Nurture/nature or The Self/The Other?
Portfolio
