Visual Pleasure

In this series I examine the artificiality of femininity, and the strategies we employ to create the illusion of sexuality. In the photographs the female character is not a simulacra - but the construction of her as an idealised woman renders her artificial. During the shoot I arrange myself on a stage with cut-out furniture and attempt to hold them in place. I struggle to maintain the position I have allocated myself – that of the object of desire. On first reading these images appear to fall neatly into a patriarchal sexual language that Mulvey describes, a construction of sexuality that reduces the female subject into a 2-dimensional representation. But the woman is isolated in a world of her own making – she has created the fantasy of body image in order to appeal to the male gaze. This is the female paradox – she is captive in the panopticon that she built up around herself.