harvardfineartslib:Jay Lynn Gomez (formerly Ramiro Gomez) was born in 1986 to Mexican immigrant

Jay Lynn Gomez(formerly Ramiro Gomez) was born in 1986 to Mexican immigrant parents in San Bernardino, California. In her Domestic Scenes series, she paints domestic workers within the images of wealthy lifestyles taken from home décor magazines. Using acrylic paint, Gomez adds nannies, gardeners, and day laborers to full-page advertisements from magazines, bringing forth the often invisible labor of those who work behind the scenes to make such luxurious lifestyles possible for the privileged.
Starting in 2009, Gomez worked as live-in nanny for a Los Angeles family for two years. During this time, she began the Domestic Scenes series, documenting her daily experiences and observations of other workers in the home and the neighborhood.
“Gomez’s treatment of the figures, who are nondescript and without discernible facial features, addresses the perception of invisibility and interchangeability of the workers while foregrounding the friction of their position as a universal concern within domestic labor. In an acute synthesis of stylistic treatment with concept, the artist mutes the individuals within the homes, yet she names each figure and describes his or her actions in the title of the piece, highlighting the worker’s presumed anonymity within this hierarchical class structure.” (p.120)
In March 2021, Gomez announced that she is a trans woman. At the time of the publication of Home—So Different, So Appealing, she had not yet identified as trans woman, and is listed under her former name, Ramiro Gomez.
Image 1: Ironies, 2013, Acrylic on magazine leaf, 11” x 8 1/2”
Description: A woman with dark hair sitting in a chair with a dog across from her in front of a bookcase.
Image 2: Domestic Scene,Beverly Hills, 2013, Acrylic on two magazine leaves, 11 ½" x 16”
Description: A woman with long dark hair standing and looking out the window in a luxurious living room.
Image 3: Alma and Owen, 2013, Acrylic on magazine leaf, 11”x 8 1/2”
Description: A woman with dark hair standing in the luxurious living room while a small boy with blond hair crawls on the floor in front of her.
Home–So different, So appealing
Chon A. Noriega, Mari Carmen Ramírez, Pilar Tompkins Rivas.
Los Angeles, California: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Houston, Texas: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, [2017]
Distributed by University of Washington Press.
288 pages: illustrations
English
HOLLIS number: 990152435020203941