Artists Statement
| I am searching for the moment of transition where when wearing
red lipstick while walking down the street I suddenly become an object for
viewing, and is this a changeable reality? I make films and videos and I perform within them. My engagement with the lens is an intimate performance as I control the entire shooting process, but as a result the lens is also distant and isolated as it is the only other present. I work in this dynamic to examine the portrayal of women and femininity in cinema—how the cinema has fragmented female identity, specifically my own. I perform multiple characters for my camera in order to manifest the multitude of facets cinema proposes as feminine. This multitude is represented as a set of three characters divined from psychoanalysis or a singular character that is visually multiplied on screen or composited from aesthetics referential to cinema’s idealized woman. I also break down the habitual cinema structures that imprison femininity. I am interested in the gaze of the camera as objectifier and how the close-up disembodies and symbolically fragments the female star. The cut is my tool for opening up the interstitial and freeing the woman from the object gaze. Often I utilize time and motion (speed adjustments in editing or holding a still pose) to suspend the construct, the female star in the very unreality of cinema, in order to foreground the moments which evince objectification. My work therefore is a gathering of cinematic fragments of myself, but by extension also the gathering up of the entire category of female identity, which I would argue continues to suffer from the codifying of the feminine image in popular culture. I find instability in women using sex and sexiness for empowerment, there is a conflict as women continue to become sex objects despite their “owning it” on the screen, in art, and in the streets. I am searching for the moment of transition (the cut) where when wearing red lipstick (close-up) while walking down the street I suddenly (freeze frame) become an object for viewing (the gaze), and is this a changeable reality? |