Nominated for: Nagoya University of the Arts Prize (group nomination)
Pink is the foundation of my practice. Pink connotes sweetness, softness, tenderness; it is the official colour of girlhood – the visual representation of sugar, spice, and everything nice. It is femininity. My work is pink, made through a feminine lens, depicting my experiences as a young woman and my life-long relationship with femininity. It addresses traditional expectations of womanliness – inanimate, weak, subservient – through recreation of feminine stereotypes. Using film, photography, installation, performance, and writing to depict ‘woman’ – as doll, dessert, furniture, slut – to raise questions of how these stereotypes are read as restricted modes of being and to scrutinise consumption of female bodies. Sweet Cherry Pie – a projection work depicting a table set for two – illustrates the absurdity of these metaphors through mirroring the female form with a homemade cherry pie. The use of feminised labour (i.e. baking) engages with the domestic spaces women are expected to inhabit and addresses issues of female autonomy. My practice engages both feminist art history (beginning with Chicago and Schapiro’s Womanhouse,) and gender discourse within popular culture, particularly the modern resurgence of the hyperfeminine – expressed both by young women and drag-queens. My work is intrinsically linked to modern-day (lipstick) feminism and the belief that femininity is valuable. At the core of my work is the message: there is power in pink.
