Statement About “Gaze-Challenging Body Suit/Skin”

I propose to construct a costume that will be bonded directly to the skin of the artist/model. The costume would be a collage of magazine clippings of images of sexualized women. My inclination is to only use images of disembodied body parts; for example, an eye instead of an entire face. The demonstration would consist of the artist/model displaying herself in a store window, preferably in an indoor mall. While on display, the artist/model would pose for the spectator/voyeur that stopped to look, but would not be a passive object. The artist/model would instead make eye contact with the spectators/voyeurs, thereby effectively “troubling” their Gaze.

Personal space is affected by the clear glass between the spectator/voyeur and the artist/model: the spectators feel safe and justified in staring at the model due to her status as a display object and a sex object, and she feels safe in her “private” personal space behind the glass. This is similar to a peep show, which I am reminded of while I theorize my idea by an applicable book I recently read about women, power, and erotic dancing called Bare by Elizabeth Eaves. In it, Eaves discusses the nature and constructions of power between customers and peep show dancers, the strange comfort of the glass between them, and notions of feeling safe and powerful while subjecting oneself to objectification for the means of a stranger’s sexual gratification. I struggled with these themes throughout the book, and having finished it, I still find these topics to be problematic and fascinating.

By covering myself with images of disembodied sexualized women in magazines, I am conducting an exercise of reflexivity: by eliciting the spectator’s gaze to the images on my body I am in effect drawing the spectator’s attention to his (or her) voyeurism and my objectification. The suit/skin of images brings to mind a kind of armor, or scales...

The imagery of scales is powerful, and I am contemplating working more with that idea. A little rhyme I made up comes to mind:

you consume me.
I consume you.
I am the creature
of your objectification zoo.

The Gaze being consumptive, the spectator/voyeur consumes me while I direct my Gaze back and consume the spectator/voyeur. With the collage of images I hope to evoke an image of a creature covered in scales, a creature that is the product of our objectifying society, a creature that is the product of what women have morphed into through the evolution of fashion, rape-culture, and patriarchy. As if there is a zoo of these women, and I am a creature in the zoo.

Something else I found myself toying with is communication, and how badly I want to communicate during this process. I do not want to verbally say anything during the demonstration, and I think that is important, but I feel the urge to create a venue of discourse for the public to communicate with me. I thought about posing a question without verbally asking it, and having the spectators answer, either on a message board, or to the video camera. Some questions I would love to know are as follows:
what do I mean to you?
what does this mean to you?
what do you think about this?

and my favorite, which would be the most succinct:

(un)comfortable?

I have many decisions about this project yet to be made.