My goal is to create work that provokes an intriguing social engagement into sexual politics by questioning stereotypes and confronting the traditionally assumed structure of the gaze. I want to critique the dynamic of looking by challenging the relationship between viewer and object. By manipulating viewer/object assumptions, I hope to empower the object through its ability to direct the ways in which the viewer seeks and experiences pleasure. Initially, my forms seduce the viewer with familiar erotic poses that beckon a scopophilic gaze- tapping into the pleasure associated with viewing the female body as an object on display for delectation - but seduction progresses beyond the visual into space, body, and touch.
My work activates tactile and experiential sensory pleasures by enticing a desire to touch the smooth and sensually undulating surfaces of the forms. The physicality of the human space and scale in which my work exists evokes a bodily identification with the viewer. I want my viewers to be acutely aware of the space their bodies are within and feel as though they are being pushed and pulled within that space as their gaze follows the fluid lines and curves that wrap and spiral around massive forms. My forms cannot be understood in a glance - they demand a moving around and command the gaze from multiple points of view.
Pleasure as it exists within my work is double edged and has guilt and discomfort as its binary counterpart. The fluid lines and curves that seduce the viewer’s gaze to twist and wind around erotically posed figures, may in turn repel the gaze as the folds present uncomfortably suggestive and visceral undulations penetrating and enveloping sections of the form. Not only is it spatially disorienting for the viewer to move around the work, the familiar identification with woman as complacent sexual icon is perpetually disrupted as new viewing positions reveal larger-than-life abstractions of female genitalia violating the viewer’s expectations. My goal is to employ the forms with the ability to reverse the traditional structure of the gaze, so that the object looked upon has a substantial enough presence and power to create a self-conscious awareness of voyeurism – forcing the viewer to confront his or her own fears and desires. I hope to open up an ambiguous space in which the viewer is caught between feeling pleasure and guilt.