Iron Butterfly: Nasreen as Imelda as Olympia as Venus
“Perception is real,” asserted Imelda Marcos in the 2019 documentary, The Kingmaker. “The truth is not.” Under colonial rule, illustration and photography were important propagandistic tools for spreading Western tenets of respectability, which dictated white supremacy and Christian ideas of sexual morality, throughout the Philippines. Imelda Marcos – former first lady of the Philippines and wife of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and mother of Filipino president Bongbong Marcos – was a master of the power of suggestion. She tapped into this historical example of using images to shape public perception both in the Philippines and overseas. Acknowledging the performative tensions of her position, Imelda herself has stated that “The problem with First Ladies is that you have to set the standard. My role is to be both star and slave.”
In Iron Butterfly, Khan’s pose mirrors one struck by Imelda in numerous publicity shoots, which, in turn, mimics that of famous reclining women in Western art history – Manet’s Olympia, interpreted to be a prostitute and Titian’s Venus of Urbino, a goddess. Weaponizing Khan's image to disrupt Euro-centric ideations of beauty and a centuries-long legacy associated with the complexities of consumption, admiration, and women’s agency, the artists are denouncing the ongoing exploitation of Filipino women both as sexually fetishized bodies, and as a global labor source – Filipinos make up a significant percentage of US labor in caretaking professions like domestic labor, medical care, and sex work. This project is a reclamation of the freedom of self-representation historically denied to colonized peoples.
