About
My practice explores ‘side-eye’, ‘a sidelong glance expressing disapproval or contempt'. It is famously used in popular culture through memes and chick-flicks, the executor often female. This look is generally understood as a way to communicate silently, for instance being in a situation where you feel you can’t speak up. My work explores the humorous yet also sinister context of the look. Generally intimidating it creates a powerful allyship, and can sharply change the power dynamics of a given situation. I used film and photography to explore this, however my concepts guide the media I chose to use within my practice.
I worked with this social dynamic, experimenting with different ways to capture and exhibit the glance. Finally, I presented it on projector stands with laptops at the head height of the average woman. The laptops interact with each other, sharing the glances of the filmed women, and the stands bring an anthropomorphic nature into the work, by simply placing the heads at eye level, only hinting at a physical form, without sex but full of gender. Removing the physical body emphasizes the look by underlying its subtle power and fighting back against the historical stereotypes of the gallery space. By displaying the laptops in pairs, it enables the allyship, ostracizing the viewer and bringing about a social tension.
Inspired to recreate the technique of lenticular prints, I was therefore able to capture the dynamic of the videos but in material, not digital form, creating a bridge between the two spaces. The simplicity of the work enables its significance to change depending on the space it’s in. The print also creates paranoia within the viewer as the surveyor becomes the surveyed.
