Mary Ellen Strom – Nude #5, Eleanor Dubinsky and Melanie Maar (2005)

Mary Ellen Strom’s meticulous restaging of Gustave Courbet’s The Sleepers (1866),
a classic depiction of lesbian sexuality for the benefit of the
heterosexual male viewer, is projected at the size of the original
painting. Strom’s intent is to re-embody, literally, a territory that
was not only the location of male desire but also the prerogative of
male artistic production. Strom’s models are her peers – contemporary
women artists. Her nudes have names. They collaborate with Strom in
making lesbian pleasures available to lesbians, among other viewers.

–Catherine Lord, Art & Queer Culture (New York: Phaidon, 2013), 219.