Stepping into the Phebe Conley Art Gallery this week provides what Julie Araujo calls a challenge of beauty standards and normalized notions toward the human body.

With over 50 different paintings on display, Araujo showcases her graduate art show with an emphasis on vulnerability and body perception.

“I think beauty is definitely seen as a currency of women,” Araujo said. “It’s not about your shape, it’s not about exercising or getting to your goals physically, I think it’s more internal. I just wish that people would work on their mental health and work on their insides and see more of the body’s ability and thinking that that’s powerful.”

The art show, titled “Body and Image,” celebrates the natural nude and displays many distinct looks at the human body through Araujo’s paintings, which utilize oil, charcoal and other forms of mixed media.

Towards the end of the gallery, the “Breasts Project” features 73 of Araujo’s paintings.

The show first debuted at Corridor 2122, a Downtown Fresno art gallery, on July 6. Katrina Elaine Sanchez Carlock, another Fresno State graduate student, presented her collection of phallic sculptures alongside Araujo’s collection. At the time, Araujo only had a collection of 54 paintings. Araujo and Carlock presented their collections as a celebration of the natural nude.

After reaching out to community members as well as social media, Araujo asked participants to take photos of their bare breasts and submit them in order to work against the male gaze, an act in media that represents women solely as objects of desire.

With the project, Araujo intended the women who submitted photos to be in complete control of what they were seeing and how they were displayed.

Sarah Theller, a previous Fresno State graduate student who received her M.A. in art history, is a colleague of Araujo’s and was able to see the show during the reception on Oct. 12.

“Honestly, [it’s] just incredible. I’ve never seen an artist attempt something so raw with the body like this, especially with embracing just the raw embrace of how the body is. How the female body is. Just absolutely breathtaking,” Theller said.

Other artists who attended the reception expressed similar sentiments about Araujo’s work and how it provides a look into shared internal experiences of a woman’s body.

Audia Dixon, a Fresno State alumna, said that the exhibition speaks volumes about the history that’s held within the human body, from how they’re born to how they grow up and what they do and feel throughout the process.

“This exhibition is phenomenal. Straight up. Period,” Dixon said. “[It shows] discipline. I’m sure there have been periods where [Araujo] had to take a break or something or just kind of be free, you know, with all the hustle and bustle of academics as a graduate student.”

“Body and Image” is a culmination of Araujo’s work that she’s done in the graduate art program at Fresno State.
After transferring from Fresno City College in 2019, she finished her undergraduate studies in 2021 and then entered the graduate program. This is her last semester.

Araujo states that she initially entered the graduate program to sharpen up her technical skills, but found that it also helped to develop her skills in critical thinking and perception of the world overall.

Susana Sosa, a former teacher of Araujo’s at Fresno City College, currently works alongside her at the community college and states that she’s grown as an artist.

“The show is a beautiful exploration of bodies and different body types of women and makes us think about that theme in art, which is a really old theme, but she does it in a different way with realistic bodies that connect in a very human way,” Sosa said.

Araujo said she wanted to show the vast spectrum of what all of us are. She said that in order to open yourself up and share your story, you get the most out of whatever it is that you’re doing.

Iris Mendoza, an art major with an emphasis in ceramics, enjoyed what she took from the show.

“I’m into body types and making sculptures with ceramics so when I see stuff like this, it kind of inspires me,” Mendoza said.

Araujo’s exhibition will be on display until Friday, Oct. 20, and the gallery hours are from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.