Theatre of the

Female Self

By Kate Rogers

Theatre of the Female Self
By
Kate Rogers
BFA, OCAD University, Drawing & Painting 2017
BFA, York University, Dance Choreography & Performance 2010

A THESIS SUPPORT PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF FINE ARTS

EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN
2020

© Kate Rogers, 2020

TABLE OF CONTENT
TABLE OF CONTENT

I

ABSTRACT

II

LIST OF FIGURES

III

INTRODUCTION

1

AUTOETHNOGRAPHY

2

WOMAN/POSITIONALITY

4

RESEARCH INQUIRIES

6

COLLAGE AND GENDER REPRESENTATION IN THE MEDIA

7-12

Your Body is Not Your Own

11

Starting Over

13

VIDEO AND PHOTOGRAPHY PROCESS

14

When Experiences Accumulate

16

THE SELF-PORTRAIT WITH NO FACE

17

STRANGE SHADOWS

22

DOMESTIC BODIES

29

CONCLUSION

35

Abstract
This thesis project is auto-ethnographic research and practice-based inquiry, into
the cultural construction and representation of women. Movement, video installation,
photography and handmade collage are combined to examine the marginalized spaces of the
domestic. Exploring metaphors of the fragmented female body, this document seeks to
challenge Western patriarchal ways of knowing and interpreting the world. Inspired by fourth
wave feminist theory and artwork, I discuss the female experience as one that is made strange
through gender codes, rape culture and spectatorship.

LIST OF FIGURES
FIGURE 1.
Untitled Collage 1, magazine collage on watercolour, 2019.

8

FIGURE 2.
Untitled Collage 2, mixed media collage on wood, 2019.

8

FIGURE 3.
Good Girl, magazine collage on watercolour paper, 2020.

10

FIGURE 4.
Pink Spiral, video stills, 2019.

13

FIGURE 5.
Rose Mask Portrait, digital photograph, 2019.

17

FIGURE 6.
Untitled, Video Still from Watcher in the Woods series, 2019.

22

FIGURE 7.
Floating Scales, video still from Spectral Bodies installation, 2019

25

FIGURE 8.
Sitting Ghost, video still from Spectral Bodies installation, 2019.

27

FIGURE 9.
Homebody, video still, 2020

29

FIGURE 10.
Embodied Contemplation, video stills, 2020.

33

Introduction
After months of isolation due to the COVID-191 global pandemic, I have had an
opportunity to refocus my research as well as my approach to writing this thesis paper. I have
also had time to reflect deeply on domestic life, feminism and the violent oppression of
capitalism. I feel deeply changed by the past few months both personally and artistically.

In previous drafts of this thesis, I had struggled to force my research into clear,
academic, and analytical writing. When I tried to infuse the personal within it, I felt exposed and
foolish. This was never laid out as the ideal format for my paper, but I had spent so many years
in university programs, being warned not to make my work too personal or sentimental.

This anxiety I was experiencing around appearing overly emotional, I now recognize, as
a feminist issue. It is an example of how patriarchal culture attributes emotion and personal
identity writing with women, and by doing so, undermines the inherit values in these traits. As
Canadian author and feminist Erin Wunker has put forth, “We are taught to dismiss or be wary
of any language that could be read as feminized or, for that matter, racialized” (Wunker 82-3).
This dismissal silences marginalized voices further, when we refuse to allow for emotion and
the sharing of embodied experiences.

1 Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), was first identified in late 2019. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses found

mostly in animals. In humans, they can cause diseases ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases
such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). The disease
caused by the new coronavirus has been named COVID-19.
Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020. (BC Centre for Disease
Control)

1

Autoethnography
I have chosen to write this thesis project in an autoethnographic approach, and mix
theory with passages of personal storytelling. My intent is to evidence how everyday
experiences can accumulate to alter how the gendered body relates to space, the world and
themselves. Autoethnography is a form of research that exists across many disciplines in
differing forms (Chang 110). In writing, autoethnography “seeks to describe and systematically
analyse (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience (ethno)”
(Ellis, 2004; Holman Jones, 2005).

If one of the main goals of the patriarchy is to impose a silence on women through
killing “off stories and women to maintain power” (Solnit, 85), then to persist at telling one’s
story, is to perform a radical act of defiance. This is the basic idea behind the 2 nd wave feminist
mantra ‘the personal is political’(Hanisch); and so autoethnography becomes an extension of
this view, in modern form. There is immense subversive power in feminist, autoethnographic
texts for their ability to “challenge the fundamental hegemonic discourses and assumptions of
selfhood, identity and gender by positioning women at the centre of the narratives and
knowledge making” (Metta, 29).

This is my first attempt at autoethnographic writing, though my artwork has been
exploring personal themes for some time now. There is a risk in this approach of privileging my
own narrative above others (Chang, 114), and so I acknowledge the limitations of my own

2

perspectives and do not claim them to be universal. The “I” that I refer to in this project is one
that is continually revised and resituated; not one that claims to be all-knowing.

My practice operates from the idea that when we share personal experiences in relation
to cultural conditions, we empower others to do the same. Sometimes we may even begin,
with our stories, to chip away at the power structures of oppression. A recent example of the
potential force of sharing women’s personal narratives is the reckoning brought forth by the
“me too” Movement. Originally conceived in 2006 by survivor and activist Tarana Burke, the
“me too” Movement began as Burke’s community building response to stories of sexual abuse
that were revealed to her during her time as a youth worker (Burke, 2016).

In 2017, the hashtag #metoo had begun gaining popularity on social media, and within
six months women worldwide were sharing stories of men abusing positions of power (Burke,
2016). The unprecedented nature of this movement was not that it was the first instance of
women sharing stories of gender oppression. Instead, it was the first instance in history of
women’s testimonies being listened to on a grand scale, “and even then, as we’ve seen in the
case of Christine Blasi Ford testifying against supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh 2 —
continuing to be silenced” (Solnit, 7).

2 Dr. Christine Blasey Ford faced the US Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27th, 2018 with allegations

against, then judge, Brett Kavanaugh. The allegations were that Kavanaugh, who was a Supreme Court nominee,
had sexually assaulted her thirty-six years ago. Though Kavanaugh did end up with the lifetime appointment of
Supreme Court Judge, Blasey Ford’s testimony emboldened women worldwide to come forth with their own
stories and the hashtag #whydidntIreport gained momentum on social media. Her treatment during the trial gave
evidence to the hostile reception women face when coming forth with accusations against powerful men (TIME,
2018)

3

“Woman”
I continue to use the word ‘woman’ and refer to ‘female subjectivity’ within this project. This is
because while the concept of ‘woman’ is not scientific, misogyny and the patriarchy continue to
threaten the lives of those living in bodies inscribed with this cultural sign. Art historian Anne
Wagner points out that “in social and cultural contexts ‘woman’ continues to signify and
resonate, as in art, whether it is actively claimed as an identification, avoided or externally
imposed” (Wagner 26). I use the term ‘woman’ with caution, while keeping in mind the diverse
experiences that are included under this category. I do not claim to represent for a universal
experience. As Butler warns, “it is one thing to use the term and know its ontological
insufficiency and quite another to articulate a normative vision for feminist theory which
celebrates or emancipates an essence, a nature, or a shared cultural reality which cannot be
found” (Butler 529).

Positionality
My sisters and I were raised in Toronto, Canada, by my disabled, single mother and my
maternal grandmother. When I was four years old, my mother got the courage to leave my
increasingly abusive and alcoholic father. My father then vindictively evicted us from our family
home, repossessed our car, and refused to pay any child support. He left my family homeless
and eating out of food banks. He also regularly called to scream and emotionally terrorize my
mother—and by extension us.
4

These experiences showed me the resilience of strong determined women. They also
ingrained in me a deep mistrust of men. This division of genders in my life was compounded by
the fact that my Catholic grade school class only had five boys in it by the time we had made it
to Grade 8 (1 of which had bullied me through it all). After this, I attended an all-girls Catholic
high school. Most of my formative years were spent separated from boys. Any interactions I did
have with men or boys, was often traumatic. This definitely did not lead to a healthy view of
men or relationships.

My childhood existed at the intersection of gender and class issues. I learned that
although women are associated with domestic space, they often have no legal claim of that
space. The women in my family were evidence of the physical and emotional dangers living in a
female body could bring forth. However, there were many forms of oppression that I did not
and have not had to experience.

I am learning to recognize the many ways that my body has afforded me privileges. I am
a third-generation Canadian citizen, of English, Irish and Slavic decent. I am an able-bodied,
cisgender woman. I am university educated and hold several degrees (and an appalling amount
of student debt). Entering into the conversation of feminism, I am working to learn the many
ways BIPOC3 and LGBTQIA+4 bodies experience oppression in varying overlapping forms. I am

3 BIPOC is an acronym for Black, Indigenous, People of Colour
4 LGBTQIA+ an acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Pansexual, Transgender, Genderqueer, Queer, Intersexed,

Agender, Asexual, and Ally community

5

actively engaging in the life-long work of ensuring my body is not weaponized against other
bodies. (Wunker, 44).

Research Inquiries
In my practice, I experiment with the subversion of materials and props, to explore
female subjectivity and the marginalized spaces of the domestic. Through the concealment of
my visual identity, I attempt to complicate easily readable and universalized depictions of
women.

The primary questions posed in my thesis project are:

o Can depictions of female subjectivity through autoethnographic art and written texts,
highlight how violence and control shapes the lives of women?
o Can the sharing of female subjectivity, through video and handmade collage, show the
fragmented and varied experiences of gender?
o Can non-linear, experimental film making be used to address the troubled notion of
gender as a fixed identity?

6

Collage and Gender Representation in the Media
My thesis studio work has consisted of two streams of overlapping material research: a
handmade figurative, collage practice, and an experimental film and digital photography
practice. In my handmade collage pieces, I use imagery sourced from a variety of fashion,
psychology, photography and other types of popular magazines. Sifting through the glossy print
pages, I extract the hands, limbs and hair of women subjects I find interesting or provocative. I
search for body parts that are making specific gestures or imply a certain movement. These
disparate clippings are then pieced together, usually on watercolour paper, to create hybrid
female characters. Sometimes I add fabric trims, beads or other embellishments to highlight
aspects of the collage.

In Untitled Collage 1 (Fig.1), I used decorative trim from a fabric shop to veil the collaged
figure in the image. The pink fringe, adhered to the board, hangs down and covers the top of
the woman’s image, casting a seductive shadow across her face. The problematic hybrid form
of the woman is highlighted through the addition of this decorative upholstery trim. The
materiality of this household element brings the collage into the physical space and creates
another dynamic tension of interior and exterior space, hidden and revealed.

7

Figure 1. Untitled Collage 1,
magazine collage on watercolour paper, 2019.

Figure 2. Untitled Collage 2,
mixed media collage on wood, 2019.

One artist whose work has been inspiring to my collage practice is Kenyan and New York
based contemporary artist, Wangechi Mutu. Although Mutu has recently begun to work
primarily in the mediums of sculpture and drawing, she originally began her career as an artist
creating magazine collage mixed with watercolour. In this work, she combines imagery of body
parts, teeth, hair, animals and patterns extracted from “magazines where publications; where
photography, is used to represent women in a way that doesn’t feel at all accurate to what
women are” (Mutu, The Met). Her pieces explore representations of the Black female body in
Western culture.

8

Mutu’s figures engage with similar issues of representation as my own handmade
collage pieces, although her practice is an exploration and reclamation of the Black female
body, whereas my work has explored issues of gender construction and its affects. As well,
Mutu’s collages are intricately layered works whereas mine are minimal pieces that function
almost as preliminary sketches for my video work. While engaged in the act of making collage,
Wangechi has spoken of how she is able to “vandalize the original narrative and to make
something dignified, beautiful, unreal and, to me, attractive, about these things that bothered
me” (Mutu, Inside my Studio). I feel this same act of defiance when creating my collages. It is
empowering to take photographic material of idealized, infantilized or unrealistic women and
make something new from them. I enjoy taking images that are meant to scold or shame me
into my gender role and reconfiguring them until their meaning has been subverted.

The representation of bodies in the media is significant to identity formation, because it
plays a large role in shaping how we view, relate to and think about ourselves, and each other.
If we do not take a critical eye to these representations of identities, we can miss their hidden
motives. We might take a category, such as gender, and come to believe that it is a defining
characteristic of our personhood, but as American gender theorist Judith Butler attests, it is, “a
phenomenon that is being produced all the time and reproduced all the time” (Butler, Big
Think). One of the central ways that gender is created and policed, is through the media.

9

Figure 3. Good Girl, magazine collage on watercolour paper, 2020.

Through the dissemination of images of bodies that are deemed ‘acceptable’,
patriarchal culture uses the media to shape ideas and normalize concepts and perceptions
around what being a male or a female entail. These images translate into guidelines for how
bodies should behave. The media does not hold a mirror up to society, but through the
assigning of meaning to male and female identities they are “involved in actively producing
gender” (Gill 12). How do these representations of female bodies limit the lives of the women
who adopt them as personal identity?

10

Your Body is Not Your Own
I am 23 and in my second year of an undergraduate degree in dance. I take dance lessons 5 days a
week, regularly run on the elliptical and take semi-private Pilates lessons. Over the summer I
participated in an intense training program which has fine-tuned my skills and increased my
confidence. My professor notices and praises me in a private meeting. She tells me I have what it takes
to succeed, if I could just lose twenty pounds or so. I feel devastated. The worst part is that I know that
she is right: female dancers should be small enough to be lifted by male partners. I already train hard
and eat healthy though, what is left that I can do?
I am in my 3rd year of the dance program and my long-term boyfriend dumps me. I fall into a
depression that manifests itself in obsessive working out, chain-smoking cigarettes, bouts of bingedrinking and eating very little. I lose the twenty “extra” pounds and then some. I feel dead inside. My
professors notice the weight loss and praise me for my dedication. No one asks how I lost it so fast. No
one cares, as long as I fit into the expected dainty body type of the female dancer.
I am in my final year of my dance program. After 3 years of intense work, I have made it into the
school’s pre-professional dance company. Over the summer, I have healed my heart and my body. I quit
smoking and drinking and start eating healthy again. The pounds come back, but I feel myself again.
My company director notices and she seems perturbed. If my weight loss was a sign of my
commitment, what is my healthy body signifying to her? For our final performance she tells me I must
purchase a corset. I am humiliated. With my limited student budget, I purchase one for $70 and am
uncomfortable in it the entire time. When I graduate, I attack the corset with scissors and throw it in
the garbage. I don’t feel the same love for dancing anymore or a connection to my body.

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Through my work I am looking to challenge representations of complacent female
bodies that participate happily in their own suppression. Instead, I am interested in depictions
that reflect the subjective experience of a body dominated by gender codes and rape culture. In
the collage, Good Girl (Fig. 3), I consider how representations of women in the media can
translate into a lived violence if women are not obedient to the rules of their gender. So often,
women are encouraged to be ‘good girls’ and not put themselves in compromising situations.
The onus becomes on the woman to become hyper vigilant of herself and her surroundings, so
as to avoid male aggression. This attitude becomes the basis of what is known as rape culture.
As feminist author Sara Ahmed explains, “To become girl is to learn to expect such advances, to
modify your behaviour in accordance, if you’re not careful and cautious, you can be made
responsible for the violence directed toward you” (Ahmed 18).

In the collage Good Girl (Fig. 3), I have combined images of female body parts from
three separate popular magazines, to create a faceless figure. The arms of the subject
protectively encircle the rest of its body. A ponytail of light blond hair, perfectly braided and
secured with a satin blue bow, sits where a face would presumably be. In this piece, I am
portraying how the need to be hyper-vigilant of your own safety as a woman, modifies your
daily bodily postures. It can change your relationship to your body by forcing you to take up less
space in the world. The hairstyle brings to mind a well-groomed child and is tacked on top of
the figure as though it were a mask, hiding the parts of the body that we cannot see. The
female figure is closing in on itself in an attempt of self-preservation.

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Starting Over
I am 34. I am a new Graduate school student. I have left my home province to escape an emotionally
abusive relationship that has been dominating my life for two years. I am away from his daily berating
now, but I can still hear it my head. I walk the halls and I don’t feel that I belong. Someone is going to
see that I am just as useless as he said that I am.

Figure 4. Pink Spiral, Video Stills, 2019.

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Video and Photography Processes
In my video and photography practice, I have used my own body to explore personal
stories of female subjectivity. I draw on my previous performance training as a contemporary
dancer, to play with movement as a tool for translating complex emotions or ideas into
gestures of metaphor. I begin by improvising movement and capturing it on camera. Through
an intensive editing process, I work in Photoshop to crop, loop, reverse, layer and alter the
speeds of my video clips.

In Pink Spiral (Fig. 4), repetition and speed manipulation were used to focus in on one
gesture that increased in emotion and ferocity. Standing alone in a dark black box studio, my
head partially cut from the frame, I began grasping and struggling against a giant ball of tangled
pink tinsel, until I was frantically throwing it around my body and panting from the effort. The
mass of sparkling pink strands writhed around me in an attempt to constrain my body.

The tinsel material used in this piece was intended to symbolize the internal female
body spilling out. It was also a piece about my frustrations with constant encounters of
misogyny. These accumulated experiences were starting to feel like a physical force that was
slowly restricting my movement in the world until it was suffocating. I imagined the tinsel as an
uncontainable and relentless force, visualized as menstrual blood, knotted wet hair or

14

afterbirth. Through these associations with the repulsive functions and by-products of the body
and my own lack of control over them, I was also referencing American writer and feminist
Rebecca Solnit’s variation on abjection5, the ‘Exquisite’. Solnit defines the term as “this zone
where the repulsive and the beautiful intersect, or rather in the zone where what is
conventionally considered most beautiful—the female body—and what is conventionally
considered most repulsive –also the female body – intersect” (Solnit 212).

Distinguishing the term the Exquisite from the abject, Solnit asserts that “it is the very
beauty of the work that makes it subversive, for to present the denigrated or disgusting as such
can be perfectly conventional, but to redeem it at the cost of cherished categories is a revolt
indeed” (Solnit 215). In Pink Spiral (Fig. 4), the tinsel material may cause spectators to mentally
recall ideas of the abject, but the sparkling pink strands are also quite beautiful. During the
editing process of this video, I had heightened the saturation of the pink tinsel, added filters to
exaggerate its glittering effect, and manipulated the speed at which the strands moved and fell.
This editing worked to aestheticize a dark subject matter that would not traditionally be
considered beautiful: the angered and violent female body.

5 Abject – a term created by philosopher and literary critic Julia Kristeva. “In practice the abject covers all the

bodily functions, or aspects of the body, that are deemed impure or inappropriate for public display or discussion,”
(Tate), which would include the feminine bodily fluids found so offensive in a patriarchal society.

15

This work was meant to produce both an anxiety and empathy in the viewer, through an
increasingly anxious audio of laboured breathing and by denying the audience any definite
ending or resolution. The movement in the video came to a final crescendo, with a slight pause,
only to reverse into a never-ending loop. The audience was presented with a body in a
continuous loop of frustration as they witnessed her struggle and fatigue against herself and
the outside forces of the material.

When experiences accumulate, they begin to feel like truth...
I am excited for this class and have heard encouraging things about this professor. He received his
degree from a prestigious international university, and he never lets his students forget this.
He has given us a personal writing assignment and assures us that we can freely express ourselves as
they will be kept private. When he later uses intimidation to forcefully convince others to share their
intimate writing, I refuse. He asks to speak to me in the hallway. He questions whether I belong in this
school, or in any post-secondary institution if I am not willing to be open. When I tell him, I feel I am
doing well, he demands to know my grades in other courses. I oblige and tell him my average and he
lets me know I’m at best doing mediocre. Yes, he uses that word, making reference to my progress, my
art and my abilities. I can feel that my cheeks have gotten hot and I start to cry. I’m mad at myself for
crying. He takes this as weakness and tells me higher education is hard and it is not for everyone. I am
embarrassed and he has confirmed my deepest feelings of inadequacy. I become emotionally distant
from my classes, my studio and my classmates. I want to hide. I want to quit.

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The Self-Portrait with No Face

Figure 5. Rose Mask Portrait, digital photograph, 2019

17

The idea of hiding my visual appearance through the purposeful covering, decapitation
or veiling of my face, has been a recurring element throughout my video and photography
work. In earlier pieces, fabric was draped over my figure or thinly veiled my facial features.
Hiding and revealing has become a means to explore ideas of visual identity markers and the
interior spaces of the body versus the exterior in my practice.

This process naturally led to the creation of hand-sewn masks. In the piece, Rose Mask
(Fig. 5), I used a flowered tapestry fabric, lace and a clothing zipper to hand sew a mask,
employing materials and practices traditionally associated with women and the domestic space.
The result was an identity obscuring hood that allowed me to have complete control over how
my own image was viewed. It was also meant to create a tension for the viewer who was
unable to take on the traditional role of the spectator.

In the creation of this mask, there was again in my work, a reference to Solnit’s category
of the Exquisite and to the violence of female subjectivity. I subverted the meaning of the
ornately flowered and traditionally beautiful tapestry fabric by using it to construct a mask that
resembles something between an executioner’s hood and a sadistic fetish garment. When I
posed for the self-portrait, in a black box studio, I wore the mask and all black clothing to fade
my body into the background. A single spotlight illuminated the mask and a strand of pink tinsel
(a reoccurring material in my works), hung from the neck hole of the hood. My eyes do

18

not confront the viewer straight on in the image, but instead, they gaze off camera in a posture
reminiscent of school portrait photography.

My work has questioned what it means to present an image of a woman with no visible
face. British historian and academic, Ludmilla Jordanova, has put forth that “veiling implies
secrecy. Women’s bodies, and by extension feminine attributes, cannot be treated as fully
public, something dangerous might happen, secrets might be let out, if they were open to view”
(Jordanova, 92). I was fascinated by this idea of women’s bodies seeming dangerous to
patriarchal society and therefore needing to be contained.

Rose Mask (Fig. 5), references not just the need for patriarchal culture to contain the
bodies of women, but also their desire to impose a silence or control over our experiences.
Patriarchy does not want for women to share their stories and find solidarity with each other or
the strength to mobilize. As writer and Black feminist bell hooks articulates, “we have been
socialized to be the keepers of grave and serious secrets – especially those that could reveal the
everyday strategies of male domination, how male power is enacted and maintained in our
private lives” (hooks xiii). Rose Mask (Fig. 5), is a garment that enforces silence, through the
gesture of a zippered mouth, pulled tightly shut. The ability of the hood to read as an execution
or torture accessory, suggests that this silence has been inflicted violently. The posture of the

19

middle school portrait in the image grounds the picture within everyday life. The image
becomes a portrait of the violent silencing of women in their everyday lives.

The work of American artist Cindy Sherman has informed my exploration of masks and
costuming. She has spent almost fifty years endlessly re-imaging herself in front of the camera,
using props and make-up to transform herself into different characters. Through this process of
carefully crafting and then photographing a wide array of visual identities, Sherman creates
“grotesquely familiar versions of the masks we all wear to face the word” (Julavits, 178). Her
costumes and disguises have been “so extreme and so varied, that we can almost say we don’t
know what she really looks like, even though the photography itself is straightforward”
(Loewenberg, 401). In my thesis work, most of the photographs and videos, hide or distort my
face and body, so that the characters become ambiguous figures, much like in Cindy Sherman’s
practice.

I also have a process of dress-up, disguise and improvisation that mirror Sherman’s
practice. There are no set preconceived ideas for my characters before I enter the photo studio
and begin improvising movements and trying on different props. I select my objects and
materials with general ideas in mind and allow myself the freedom in filming to let things
develop as they happen in the studio. In the resulting videos and photos, there is a distance
between my own individual identity, and the one I have chosen to perform for the camera.

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Speaking of her photography process, Sherman revealed a similar approach of improvisation,
“Once I’m set up, the camera starts clicking, then I just start to move and watch how I move in
the mirror....I may be thinking about a certain story or situation, but I don’t become her.
There’s this distance. The image in the mirror becomes her – the image the camera gets on the
film” (Julavits, 186).

While Sherman works with her own image to explore characters or tropes from the
history of film, my own figures are more abstract. I create collages of bodies or characters on
film that are meant to reveal a feeling of subjectivity rather than reference a specific movie or
actor. In films like Pink Spiral (Fig.4), I am communicating a feeling of frustration and
entrapment in the experience of living in a female body. This differs from Sherman, who has
restaged movie stills and characters to re-examine popular characters or scenarios of film.

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Strange Shadows

Figure 6. Video Still from Watcher in the Woods Series, Video Clip, 2019.

After the incorporation of masks in my work, I began to play with the use of household
objects and materials. Through a process of scouring local thrift shops and fabric stores, I
gathered together a collection of items that could be activated within the photographic/film
22

space. I sourced objects and materials that I related to domestic space, the female body and
spectatorship. In particular, I was interested in finding objects whose original functions could be
subverted and made strange through the creative process. My studio space quickly became
crowded with a variety of velvets and other fabrics, upholstery trims, and bits of reflective
plastic, lampshades, old chairs or light fixtures and handmade papers.

In the black box photo studio, I gathered the objects and materials. Wearing the pieces
or somehow activating them through gestures, I photographed and filmed them. Using video
editing software, I fragmented the video clips with excessive cropping. I then played with their
speeds to further solidify a sense of unease in the movement; which no longer appeared
human.

The ‘making strange’ of these items is meant to evoke the strange relationship women
have to domestic spaces. It also references the odd feelings that can develop or intensify for
women as they learn to decode previous encounters through a feminist lens. Australian scholar
and feminist author, Sarah Ahmed suggests that for women “feminism can be experienced as
life alienation” as we begin “recognizing how our lives have been shaped or have taken shape”
(Ahmed 2-3). Previous interactions are resituated, and failed opportunities can be identified,
and this process can “be how the world reappears, becoming odd” (Ahmed 14). Through the

23

representation of haunted domestic objects or space I have explored this life alienating process
in some of my video works.

In the Watcher in the Woods Series (Fig. 6), I transformed myself into a mysterious
figure, cloaked in a dark green velvet fabric, that emerged from the darkness. The figure
ominously faced the camera holding a small mirror over its covered face. In its other hand was
the jumbled hardware removed from an old junk shop chandelier that swayed from side to
side. The character’s forward-facing stance showed an eerie awareness of the audience’s
presence.

Similar to the process of my handmade collage, I fragmented the chandelier to identify
how its image could be transformed into something else. Abstracted from its original object,
the knotted chain of the hardware became threatening and open to multiple meanings. The
speed of the video was slowed down so that the sway of the metal became the trance-inducing
pendulum of a hypnotist, a weighted noose or the metal censer that holds incense waved by a
Catholic priest in a ceremony.

In the video installation Spectral Bodies, I created backlit projections containing familiar
objects of the home sphere that were repurposed, distorted and stripped of their originally

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intended functions. The piece consisted of 3 dining room chairs placed in the centre of a
darkened room, each chair holding a large digital projector. The projectors faced clear plastic
photography screens and threw short looping videos at them. The material of the screens
caused a double of each of the videos to appear on the wall behind it. One projection from the
installation, UFO Lampshade contained a single floating pink lampshade. The fringe of the
theatrical domestic item rippled back and forth, and the object mysteriously spun, hovering in
the black space around it. The swaying of its rounded form mimicked the sauntering hips of a
voluptuous woman or an alien spaceship.

Figure 7. Floating Scales, Video Still from the Spectral Bodies Installation, 2019.

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In another video from the series, Floating Scales (Fig. 8), an old bronze scale and a metal
embroidery hoop glistened in the darkness of the frame and seemed to hover in mid-air. To film
the clip, I dressed all in black and wore the hoop around my neck while I balanced the scale on
one extended arm and moved about the studio. In the editing process, I erased my body from
view so that the objects appeared to dance around by themselves in a magical ritual or
ceremony of haunted items. The scales have several metaphorical links to female bodies. They
can represent the injustice of gender relations and the balance of trying to conform to
prescribed gender roles. They can also represent commerce and the effects of capitalism on the
female body: a system that depends on the oppression of women and BIPOC for its survival.

In other clips from Spectral Bodies (Fig. 8) the shadows of an old chandelier swung
dangerously from side to side. The thick wire of a broken light fixture cord hung like an ominous
noose on another projection screen. Another projection depicted the shadow of a draped and
ghostly figure that watched the scene while slowly sitting down into a dining room chair.

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Figure 8. Sitting Ghost, Video Still from the Spectral Bodies Installation, 2019

In the American, contemporary installation artist Jessica Stockholder’s practice, there is
a similar investigation of domesticity. This is done through her combinations of a variety of
colourful household objects “drawn from the stuff of hardware stores, second-hand furniture
shops, garage sales, and basement storage rooms” (Doll Sutan 19). I found her Kissing the Wall
Series particularly relevant to my installation Spectral Bodies. In this series of assemblages,
Stockholder left visible cords trailing from her human-scale sculptures that connected to outlets
in the wall and were reminiscent of umbilical cords. In discussing this series, feminist art
theorist, Fiona Carson, noted that Stockholder “constructs an architecture of interdependence
and attachment by mimicking the mother-child relationship” (Carson 249).

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In Spectral Bodies, the digital projectors were propped up on stacks of books, with a
tangle of cords, haphazardly hidden behind them. One long black cord extended from each of
the projectors and connected to outlets on the wall, similar to Stockholder’s piece. However,
Stockholder allowed the long cords coming from her installations to remain intentionally visible,
whereas, I used black electrical tape to try to cover and deemphasize the cords. In future
renditions of Spectral Bodies, I am interested in exploring Stockholder’s approach, by
emphasizing the electrical cords and where they connect with the chairs and wall outlets. This
addition would further add to a feeling of eerie familiarity with the anthropomorphized
projectors, while also referencing maternal relationships to space.

Another creator who works with the subversion of household items and is inspiring to
my current practice, is Swedish artist Ulla-Stina Wikander. In her process, she covers domestic
items from the 1970s with repurposed, thrift-store, cross stitch embroidery pieces. Her work
engages with conversations around kitsch, women’s labour and crafts (Wikander). By covering
the objects with the cross-stitch pieces, she transforms the original domestic item into
something that appears magical and yet familiar. In my own work I have repurposed household
items but have never combined them in the dramatic way that Wikander does. I would like to
start playing with the look of the objects I source, as well as their functions. How do different
combinations of the objects, and materials (layered, wrapped over, sewn into) change their
context? The objects and materials can become a collage in physical space.
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Domestic Bodies

Figure 9. Homebody, Video Still, 2020

In recent films, I have begun to layer videos files on top of each other in Photoshop, to
create video collages. Several videos are combined with still images, to create short, nonnarrative vignettes. In the piece Homebody (Fig. 9), I collected images from magazines of
exterior and interior elements of domestic space. Arranging the clippings on watercolour paper,
I constructed the abstracted shape of a home. Peeking through the windows of the

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house are dissected, close-up images of a brain. A cut-out of a hand and arm reaches from the
left side of the composition.

The handmade collage was then photographed and opened in Photoshop, where I
layered a mixture of my own footage and found video clips on top of the composition. A faucet
steadily dripped water, a lamp turned on and off, dust particles floated in the air, and the
silhouette of a distressed figure moved through an anxious loop of movement. The video clips
faded in and out of the film, creating an overall image of a house that has become merged with
a human body.

Homebody (Fig. 9), was created after I experienced an early miscarriage and became
confined to my home in the process of physically and emotionally healing. The imagery in the
collage represents my mental space during this time. My home, that had felt like a safe haven
of protection, now felt confining and acted as a constant reminder of my grief. The audio of the
video, a continuous dripping of water, slowed down through editing, represented my strange
relationship to time. Hours turned into days and then weeks of retreating in my bedroom with
little sleep.

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Creating this collage became an act of pulling myself out of, and making sense of, a
depression that was settling in. My domestic space had become strange through my body’s
traumatic association with it. I wondered how many women throughout history had
experienced similar distaste for their domestic surroundings as the result of bodily trauma or
abuse? Feminist writer Sara Ahmed points out that “Feminists archives are full of scenes of
domesticity, in which domestic objects become strange, almost menacing” (Ahmed 65). I
wanted this collage to embody this feeling of the familiar turning hostile; monotony mixing with
an alienating oddness.

Embodied Contemplation (Fig. 10), is my latest video piece exploring isolation and deep
thought. In this work, I have blended a series of videos and photographs and unified them
through a pink and purple colour palette. The piece takes place in two settings: a domestic
scene, and a nature scene. The videos are meant to play one after the other, on loop.

The first video is of the interior of an apartment. The scene has been constructed
through the piecing together of abstracted photos of a living space, and shadow videos of
domestic items (a ceiling fan, hanging laundry, a balcony fence). An oval window fades in and
out of the video, revealing the shadow of a figure, repeatedly puffing on a cigarette. In the
background, the white noise of the fan is punctuated by the steady ticking of a clock. This
setting, like Homebody (Fig. 9), explores my relationship to my apartment after months of

31

forced isolation within it. Time is no longer linear and my actions: smoking, laundry, and deep
thinking, are repetitive and never-ending. I have found myself contemplating the isolating
nature of the domestic labour of women throughout history during this confinement and may
explore this idea further in future works.

The second video is set in a field of pink flowers after a rainfall. A portal appears within
the field with the silhouette of a fern. A shadow hand then enters the portal, interacts with the
fern and proceeds to perform a series of gestures over the field. The setting is peaceful and
soft, and the hand glides gracefully over it. The dance is a meditative process of connecting with
the earth through movement.

While creating Embodied Contemplation (Fig. 10), I had the opportunity to take online
contemporary dance classes with renowned Canadian dancer and choreographer Margie Gillis.
She led a dance series which she called ‘guided movement meditations’, focusing on keeping
the mind and body open and explorative during this time of intense transition (Gillis 2020).
During the classes, she discussed accessing varying states of mind in order to relate to the
world and deal with one’s own reactions to trauma. Her approach draws on Tibetan Buddhist
concepts of nonlocality which I would like to research further for future videos.

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Figure 1. Embodied Contemplation, Video Stills, 2020.

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This piece has been an investigation into non-linear ways of thinking and challenging
established patriarchal ways of knowing. I have felt extremely emotional over the past few
months as a response to current world affairs. My natural instinct is usually to attempt to
suppress or hide this reaction, as it is often deemed by society, as not an appropriate response.
Author and academic, Siri Hustvedt explains, “a stubborn sense of emotion as dangerous, as
something that must be controlled, put down and subjugated to reason has remained a part of
Western culture” (Hustvedt 6). In these videos, I embrace the emotional feelings that have
arisen through this time, as a fertile ground for exploring new ways of creating, moving and
thinking.

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Conclusion
With a critical inquiry into the construction of gender, how it is performed, and how this
performance affects its subjects, this research project questions what it means to live out a life
marked with the cultural signifier ‘woman’. The work I have started in this thesis project is an
on-going and shifting process. Much like the concept of gender, it is both fluid and fragmented.
It develops as I learn to decolonize my own thought processes from patriarchal and colonial
ways of knowing and experiencing the world. Through this I am able to recontextualize previous
experiences and connect them to a larger socio-political framework. This means that the work
has become a journey in personal growth and reclamation as well.

Rooted at my practice is a grounding in materiality and gesture. A bundle of tangled pink
tinsel or upholstery trim has the metaphorical power to stand in for larger concepts about a
female body in physical distress or hiding. An old tapestry fabric, reconstructed into a menacing
hood, carries with it, associations to bourgeois living spaces, domestic violence or sadomasochistic costuming. Fragmentation at various stages and forms has also become important
to my process as a disrupter and as an aesthetic tool.

Going forward, I will continue to explore the realm of the domestic in relation to the
female body. The recent pandemic has reinforced the relevance of this area of research and has

35

also allowed me to re-engage with domestic crafts that I grew up learning from my mother and
grandmother. I am interested in combining these mediums of embroidery, rug-making and
quilting into my material practice. Connected to these ways of making, is the opportunity to
continue my engagement with a conversation around gender and class that I began with my
autho-ethnographic writing in this paper. These areas are all rich with potential as I find ways to
weave my writing and visual practices together. As well, I am eager to allow my materiality to
grow in the amount of physical space it claims in the gallery and to create larger video and
collage installations that assert the importance of women’s experiences.

.

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