ALSO taking off from his 2012-18 painting titled The Bitch inspired by a Kool cigarettes print advertisement and then from his 2022 painting Infanta Margarita Teresa in Pink Gym Wear (or, The Bitch 2), this piece, titled Variation on Alfonso Cuarón’s Shot of Sandra Bullock’s Ass (Rated Mercury 13), once again treats of a view-from-the-behind portrait of a kneeling female figure as well as tackles the slur “bitch.” Even though we know that the female figure here is afloat in zero gravity, as per the referenced film, she still appears to be kneeling.

    Now, these three above-mentioned paintings by de Veyra do try to present what at first appear to be sexist/misogynistic pictures that only upon closer examination reveal their feminist statements. In Variation, a white dog (the bitch representation) appears anew, while a smartphone in a left female hand echoes the vibrator held like a cellphone in The Bitch. And while the center rocket in Variation parodies Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin phallic rocket and spacecraft, cloud images on the present canvas’ lower left appear to form a hand with a hole in the middle (a masturbating male right hand? And is it cloud as semen?). This cloud formation echoes the cloud with airplane image in The Bitch.

    It is Variation’s parenthetical title, "(Rated Mercury 13)," that introduces the feminist sense to the whole composition. Please read our notes on The Bitch to get the whole system of representations/allusions in the series.