Looped video, 4 x 6 photo prints, fishing wires, flax thread, found images, magazine pages, alcohol cardboard boxes, projector. Projection was mapped with MadMapper.
Blindfold is about the gaze of female and how it is perceived by men, women and everyone in between. The central image of the sculpture is a pair of female eyes projected onto the top one of a pile of card board boxes. Strips of fabric wrapped around the box, attempting to block the gaze. Dozens of 4x6 size photographs are hung from the ceiling. Half of them blank, the other half featured a woman’s blindfolded eyes. Iconic images of seductive female gaze were projection mapped onto the photos, layering symbols of desire that was socially constructed to produce more desires. The boxes in the pile are covered by pages from fashion magazines, then spray painted over.
In Blindfold, the female gaze "stands up" to the male gaze.
The Gaze
In 2015, a tenured male faculty in the department where I was a graduate student sent out an email to the entire class after I had filed a sexual harassment complaint to the EOC office instructed by my academic advisor. After 3 months of investigation, the EOC office eventually ruled "not enough evidence" . Upon winning this battle, the faculty sent out an email, in which he described his version of our encounter, and accused me for "repeated attempts to lock eyes with him in a suggestive manner."
He continued to behave the way he behaved and was asked to retire 3 semester after. When I heard the news, I thought, ah. Finally.
Commenting on this experience, Blindfold was created first as a performance script. I was then invited to participate in a month-long group exhibition at Abington Art Center, for which I altered the script into a video sculpture. I hung photographs of myself - bare skin, blindfolded - from the ceiling, and projection mapped onto them images of women's stare that I gathered from mainstream media. A tower of piled-up cardboard boxes stood at the center of the room, covered in fashion magazine pages featuring women's gazes in all kinds of "suggestive manners" but was spray-painted over. At the top of the tower looping was a video of my stare, intended to be neutral, but open to interpretation.
The audience members can walk among the hanging images and observe them coming in and out of the projection, creating a dynamic layering of meanings.
Open to interpretation -- An image of my 16-year-old self innocently eating a cucumber during class break.