The Male Gaze

The Male Gaze is a collection of paper sculpture masks reminiscent in design to the beaked Plague masks (Medico della Peste) of seventeenth century Europe mixed with the panache of the Venetian masquerade masks of the same era.

However, my mask presents itself with a penis, replacing the bird-like bill of the plague doctor mask, creating a biomorphic aberration of the human body. They are caricatures of the imposition of the Male Gaze.

The masks are designed in the style of costume or performance pieces in order for the wearer to sense what it is like to be seen in the act of the Male Gaze and to witness the responses of those being gazed upon; the viewers of the mask wearer have the opportunity to experience what it feels like to be ‘male gazed’ upon. As an installation, the six masks hang collectively side by side for optimal effect, displayed so that each mask gives an unavoidable singular point of view: a one-point perspective.

Paradox in my work is multi-layered: the viewer becomes the subject of the ‘gaze’ of the mask creating a sense of how it feels to be objectified; the wearer of the mask is hiding but cannot go unnoticed. The mask counters the phallocentric through exposure, thus subverting the ‘male gaze.’

I draw from low culture through both materiality (low arts and craft) and through fetishisation, and the use of pornographic sites to inform the production of my work. Parafeminism as a style of art-practice, enables my work to expose current issues with humour while expressing my own experience. As Freud declared, “Humour is not resigned, it is rebellious.”