Poise, Power and Protocol: An American Allegory in Forty-Four Scenes

Poise, Power and Protocol explores history as a vehicle for constructing identity. Inspired by an American tradition of historical re-enactment, and its blend of reverence and play, Rueter adorns life-sized paper dolls with personal effects borrowed from each of the American First Ladies.

The process is a dialogue between the historiography of the First Ladies, from Martha Washington to Michelle Obama, and the history of image making. The source material ranges from photographic reproductions of oil paintings, to daguerreotypes, glass plate negatives, photographs and digital images. The artist’s self-portraits are combined with objects cut from historical portraits and their backgrounds. Pinned to the wall, the paper is allowed to hang and sometimes drape across the gallery floor, creating three-dimensional form and referencing the origins of portraiture in sculpture, muralism and bas-relief. 

Poise, Power and Protocol manipulates history’s inconstancy and exploits the mutability of memory, bedeviling any attempt to construct a single, all-purpose narrative.

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*Rueter would like to acknowledge Evan Winter, who photographed the "dolls," and thank the kind and helpful staff at the Library of Congress, the National Portrait Gallery, the White House and the New York Public Library for their invaluable assistance.