Wynnie Mynerva’s (B. 1993, Lima, Peru; They/Them) work revolves around gender politics, queer aesthetics, and female desire. Their painterly style and specific color palette is referential to periods in western art history that historically engaged with the female form only in relationship to the male gaze. Unravelling centuries old aesthetics to tear down and redefine femininity, Mynerva uses energetic gestures to harness a liberating power that makes it nearly impossible to impose a possessive gaze on the female forms of their paintings. Their frenetic strokes of abstracted bodies rebel against the high-art tradition of the nude as passive. Mynerva’s female subjects are unshackled from the notion that the female body should be useful, and instead maintains a wholly female presence, fully affirmed in their desires to consume and experience pleasure without boundaries, rules, or constructs.
Mynerva graduated from the prestigious Bellas Artes University in Lima, Peru and has exhibited at Matio Testino's MATE Museum, Museo de Arte Contemporario and Amaro Museo. Their work is part of numerous private and public collections most notably, Ariel & Daphna Bentata. Miami, USA, Hoffmann Brescia Collection. Lima, Peru, Ernesto Esposito. Naples, IT, Rolando Jimenez. San Juan, PR, Roger-Paris Collection. Antwerp, Belgium, Rosenzweig Private Collection, USA, Sam Smith. London, UK, Mario Testino. Lima / London, Juan Carlos Verme. Lima, Peru, Debi Wechsler Miami, USA, and Ray Ellen and Allan Yarkin. Miami, USA.