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Zhong Lin

Project 365 by Zhong Lin

2020-2021

Having grown up in a multicultural environment, ZhongLin's approach to art is heavily influenced by her upbringing. Her exposure to multiple cultures and languages from an early age has fostered an open-mindedness and curiosity about the world, qualities that are fully reflected in her photography. I really like her portraits, she often uses contrasting colors to match her images, and most of her portraits are of women, who are often confused, stagnant or in pain, which makes a very strong visual impact. Whenever I look at her work, I have a magical reaction that hits me right in the heart.

When she's not working, ZhongLin travels and shoots portraits to gain experience. But when international travel was interrupted by the COVID 19, she found her work at a standstill. So while in Taipei, she started a personal series called ‘Project 365’——challenging herself to create a new photo every day for a year and post the results on her Instagram feed every day.

It was a challenging decision and I am very impressed with her passion for creating art. Throughout the year, no matter what the external circumstances were, she consistently made the right decisions about the subject, theme and composition every day, and we can see her rich imagination and delicate expression of emotions through the pictures. This is a great project. Her work has also given me a lot of visual references and inspiration.

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Carrie Mae Weems

Kitchen Table Series

1990

These two images are from Weems' Kitchen Table Series. In the work on the left, the artist sits at the head of the table, applying her make-up in a small vanity mirror. Next to her, her daughter looks at her reflection and makes a parallel gesture with her lipstick. This scene exemplifies one way in which gender is learned and performed, while also celebrating the private subjectivity of black women's inner lives.

For this project, Carrie Mae Weems choreographed and filmed scenes from a fictional play in which she played the lead role. The scene is always the same: a small room with a table and an overhead light on which a few household objects are placed. The other actors play lovers, friends and daughters. They act out different stories in this kitchen.

Weems creates a whole world out of this plain arrangement. Traditionally regarded as a woman's space, rarely seen and presented as important, Weems turns this idea on its head. She sees the kitchen table as an important stage in life and a place where all kinds of human emotions can be expressed. The collection shows women's lives in an authentic and engaging way. It boldly showcases the complexity, strength and beauty of black women.

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Selzer, Anita. The Female Gaze : In Art and Photography. Richmond, VIC: Hardie Grant Books, 2023.

This book explores the concept of the 'female gaze' in contrast to the traditional 'male gaze' that has dominated visual culture, and how the female gaze in art and photography has redressed this imbalance. The Female Gaze: In Art and Photography traces the evolution of the female gaze in art and photography, showcasing the work of female artists and photographers such as Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin who challenge traditional narratives. They use photography to explore female identity, body politics, and self-representation.

The book has four main sections, starting with Challenging the Male Perspective. Historically, male artists have depicted women through their eyes, objectifying them as passive subjects. The female gaze reverses this, with female artists and photographers using the female gaze to represent women's experiences, emotions and bodies to reflect their own perspectives, rather than presenting them in a scrutinising manner.

The second point is empathy and subjectivity. The female gaze usually approaches its subjects in a more empathetic and subjective way. It tends to portray the emotions, inner worlds and personalities of its subjects, focusing on their humanity rather than objectifying them. The female gaze produces works that connect with the viewer on a deeper level of thought.

The third part of the process is a self-exploration that reclaims the female identity. The female gaze empowers women to explore their own identity (including confronting social norms about beauty, sexuality, and body image). By shifting the perspective from a passive object of desire to an active subject, diverse and vibrant images of women are presented.

The fourth component is an active attitude of inclusion. The female gaze provides an inclusive representation of women of different races, sizes, ages and identities. It opposes narrow standards of beauty perpetuated by the male gaze and does not focus on visual beauty as the sole purpose. Some of the female photographers and artists in the book use their work to highlight the experiences of marginalised women, creating space for underrepresented voices in art and media.

The Female Gaze: Art and Photography emphasizes the importance of the female perspective in reshaping visual culture. It allows us to see the female gaze as a powerful tool to challenge traditional gender roles, to offer more nuanced and diverse representations of women, and to occupy an increasingly important place in the arts through its own power. This book emphasizes the need to continue exploring and focusing on women's voices in art and photography.

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Marsh, Anne. Doing Feminism  : Women's Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia. Carlton, Victoria: The Miegunyah Press, 2021.

Doing Feminism: Women's Art and Feminist Criticism in Australia explores the development and impact of feminist art and criticism in Australia since the 1970s. It tells the story of how Australian women artists have used a variety of media (including painting, photography, sculpture and performance) to challenge patriarchal norms and address issues of gender inequality, sexism and the marginalisation of women in the art world. The book profiles some of the prominent Australian women artists who have contributed to this, such as Vivienne Binns, Judy Watson, Janine Burke and many others.

The book addresses how feminist art in Australia has evolved to address issues of race, class and sexual orientation as well as gender. It recognizes the contribution of Indigenous Australian women artists and explores how their work has intersected with feminist and anti-colonial struggles. It emphasizes the importance of feminist art in shaping cultural narratives and advocating for social change.

Through this book I learnt about the unique contribution of Australian women to the global feminist art movement. At the same time, after seeing how Australian feminist artists have used the female gaze to challenge issues such as gender inequality and women's marginalisation, I am in awe of their talent and bravery, and I have gained a deeper understanding and reflection on the female gaze. I hope that in my future projects I can use the female gaze as a powerful 'weapon' to present my work.

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Pixie Liao

Soft Heeled Shoes

2013

3D printed soft heels, suede shoes, metal, 7 x 3 x 7 inches

In her statement, Pixie mentioned that she personally never wore high heels because they were uncomfortable. ‘I wondered how women could support their entire body weight with such a tiny heel and be able to keep their balance and walk gracefully.’

She wanted to test the mystery of the attractiveness of high heels further. She began to imagine that if she wore a pair of soft high heels, would she still be able to walk normally? Also, how men would feel when they saw her walking on soft penes.

So Pixie used 3D printing to make a pair of high heels with a shape that references her boyfriend's penes. A soft silicon material was used for the heels. After making them, she tried on the soft heels and managed to walk a short distance while putting most of her weight on her toes during her walk.

Pixie's project on soft heeled shoes has made more people think about why women wearing high heels is seen as a sign of sensuality and how it is a visual treat for men.

From her own experience, she reflects on high heels as an accessory designed primarily for women, questioning their comfort and aesthetics, and discussing whether women wear high heels because of their own preferences or as a precept under the traditional male gaze aesthetic. The main point of my project this semester is also to discuss the phenomenon of women enduring pain and inconvenience in order to conform to society's fixed aesthetics, in the hope that more powerful and visually striking images will arouse more people to question and rethink the aesthetic standards of today's society.

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Cho Gi-Seok

Love and Hate

2024

Cho Gi Seok is a Korean photographer and visual artist known for his unique, surreal and highly programmed approach to fashion and portraiture. His work blends elements of fine art, fashion and symbolism to create dreamlike images that challenge the traditional boundaries between reality and fantasy.

In terms of visual style Cho Gi Seok's work often incorporates elements of surrealism, blurring the line between reality and imagination. Often juxtaposing natural elements such as flowers, plants or animals with human figures, his work has an over-the-top whimsical, grotesque style. His bold use of color draws attention to the intricate details of his work, making it visually striking.

Cho Gi Seok explores the relationship between man and nature in many of his works, blending figures with natural elements to create a sense of unity and harmony. This suggests an underlying commentary on the interconnectedness of life and the delicate balance between human existence and the natural world.

Cho Gi Seok has a strong focus on capturing emotion in his portraiture, and his ability to evoke emotion through subtle facial expressions and body language adds emotional depth to his work, allowing the viewer to empathize emotionally. Many of his portraits explore themes of identity, beauty and self-expression, especially in the context of contemporary youth culture.

I really enjoy this artist's portraits and there is so much detail in his work to relish. His work provides a lot of visual references for the style of my project, and although he is a male photographer, he often takes portraits of women that embody female suffering. His ability to capture and express emotion is very much worth my learning.

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Gillian Wearing

Confess All On Video. Don’t Worry You Will Be In Disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian

1994

This project is a color video lasting approximately 35 minutes. It contains ten scenes, each showing a disguised person telling a secret in an unedited monologue. Each person participates in the video through an advert in their local newspaper.

It is an interesting project to imagine complete strangers willing to travel to a location through a simple advert in a newspaper without knowing the purpose, and even after being told what to expect, a portion of the group persisted in travelling. This project explores the diversity of people's identities where their identities are not threatened and they have the opportunity to come clean. I'm also curious to see how people feel when they come clean, whether they feel relieved to be behind the 'mask' or whether they even feel ashamed.

I also found the above image excerpt from the video very interesting, as the woman's face has been visually reshaped by an external force.

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Cindy Sherman

Untitled Film Still #4

1977

Cindy Sherman is an American artist.

At the age of 23, she began working on Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980) using herself as a model, taking photographs of her in various settings and costumes to mimic the female characters of 20th-century film sets. The series became one of her most popular works and an important reference for people discussing feminism. She was a prominent feminist photographer whose work provided important ideas and contributions to the advancement of feminist photography.

For more than four decades, Sherman's work has explored themes of female identity. Since the beginning of the 21st century, she has used digital technology to construct characters and explore the many possibilities of female identity in this new era. Today, she remains an active artist, continuing to dress and create self-portraits that examine the role of women in society and history.

Cindy Sherman

Untitled

2023

In a series created last year, Sherman paired various elements of her face into different combinations before collaging them together to emphasise the malleability of the self. Choosing a single grey background, she focuses entirely on the details of the embodied face and head. She uses digital techniques to create a set of disturbing portraits of women who smile, frown, grimace and make faces at the viewer.

To create these fragmented portraits, Sherman photographed various parts of her own face - eyes, nose, lips, skin, ears - and then cut and distorted these parts to collage them onto a blank sheet of face, ultimately rendering completely new faces. This project breaks with the long tradition of voyeurism and the duality of subject and object in portraiture. It also explores the possibilities of female identity through digital technology.

The grotesque style of Cindy Sherman's project provided a stylistic guide for my project this semester. As a viewer, by viewing her work I found the grotesque style very appealing and made me want to spend more time tasting what the author was trying to convey. The grotesque style made the whole piece more dramatic and visually appealing, which I think is very applicable to feminist topics. Thus I have used a more exaggerated presentation in my own projects this semester. For example, to show that women are allergic to cosmetics, I used heavy red and pink blushes on the model's face to reflect the allergic reaction. I think this can make the image very powerful and make the viewer feel the pain more intuitively.

Exhibited at New York, Wooster Street, 18th JANUARY – 16th MARCH, 2024.

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Jessica Ledwich

Our Desires Are Not Our Own

2019

" Massive investments have been made throughout history to ensure that female desire is kept in check " – Esther Perel

At a time when women are no longer positioned as "objects" of heterosexual male desire, Our Desires are Not Our Own explores the ambiguity and complexity of female desire and happy emotions.

In 1975, Laura Mulvey coined the term ‘male gaze’ to illustrate how women have historically been presented as objects of male pleasure and desire in visual art and literature. In contemporary society, female desire is not even really recognised by culture. This exhibition raises a question - ‘can women reclaim their bodies’ and when will women express their desires properly.

One of the main complicating factors in this phenomenon is the result of the deeply rooted narratives of male-female relationships and the perpetual imbalance of power positions in which we have grown up. These narratives cause men and women to develop completely different views, expectations and are reflected in things like advertising and media platforms.

Jessica attempts to express the female gaze through the lens. Unlike the male gaze, the female gaze attempts to try and interact with the subject, getting inside the character and trying to share their experience, rather than just using them as a blank canvas for male sexual projection. It attempts to elicit a more empathetic response, which in turn elicits an emotional response from the viewer. This is where the subjectivity of the camera comes into play.

Female desire is complex, powerful and very much alive! Jessica's work sends us this message.

Selected by Art Guide Australia as Top 5 Exhibitions in August

Exhibited at Stockroom Gallery, August 2019

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Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine : Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London ; Routledge, 1993.

The Monstrous-Feminine explores how women are portrayed as monster-like characters in horror films. She builds on psychoanalytic theory, arguing that women's bodies and women's sexuality are often portrayed as a source of fear. Creed examines various archetypes of weird femininity, such as witches, vampires, or possessed women, and analyzes how these manifestations are rooted in society's anxieties about female power, sexuality, and reproduction. The book challenges traditional views of women as scary, showing how 'scary women' have become a way for a patriarchal culture to control and demonize the image of women.

In the book, Creed introduces the concept of "monstrous feminine", suggesting that female monsters are very different from male monsters. While male monsters often represent external threats, scary women are often derived from women's reproductive function and sexuality, which is seen as a source of terror. She argues that male anxiety about female sexuality and reproductive ability is often expressed in these depictions of monster women and also reflects and reinforces cultural anxiety about women in patriarchal societies.

'Monstrous feminine' is a new perspective that has given me a deeper understanding of how much patriarchal society influences the construction of women's identities and status, and has made me look at the rules and defaults in society in a more dialectical way.

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Jessica Ledwich

Monstrous Feminine

2014

Jessica Ledwich is a Melbourne-based visual artist whose work explores a number of controversial female topics, often discussing the grotesque, the vile and the often irrational in order to expose the more complex aspects of human behavior.

The project Monstrous Feminine critically examines society's values of vanity, consumerism and the quest for perfection and eternal youthfulness.Using surrealism, Jessica depicts the absurdity of our everyday lives in the most blunt way possible: when beauty standards get out of hand.

To be a well-groomed and well-behaved woman, one needs to shave their legs, paint their nails, and perform other routine beauty rituals. These tasks have become so normal that many women don't give them much thought anymore.Jessica wants to change that.

I can very much relate to this project. My project this semester is also about questioning the legitimacy of societal beauty standards by putting them on trial and discussing the deeper reasons why women seek to be beautiful. As the internet becomes more and more advanced, social media constantly sends anxiety signals to women, making them fearful of aging skin and losing their bodies, and then frantically adorning themselves in the hopes of conforming to society's aesthetic standards.

However, what we need to think about is: is this standard necessarily true beauty? Who actually set this standard? For a period of time in ancient China, the society regarded a woman's small feet as beautiful. In order to pursue such social aesthetics, women needed to break the instep of their feet at the age of 5 and then wrap them up with cloth to fix the shape of their feet, which is called ' foot-binding '. Such an aesthetic is incomprehensible nowadays.

However, at that time, many women were willing to have their feet wrapped just because it was the social aesthetic standard at that time, and at the same time, it could also satisfy men's expectations. This shows the great influence of social aesthetics on women's judgement. Looking at the modern society, women's waist corset, liposuction, dieting and weight loss is not another form of ' foot-binding ', is it? When an aesthetic needs to be achieved in a cruel way, should such beauty still be promoted?

Therefore, I believe that social aesthetics need to be challenged, questioned and re-examined by more and more people. I also hope that more women can get rid of the constraints of social aesthetics and pursue their own beauty in a more comfortable way.

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Ramak Bamza

Mustoachioed women and rhinoplastic girls

2022

The works in this collection are a tribute to the 19th-century portraits of photographer Antoin Sevruguin. Sevruguin's work offers a rare opportunity to show the private lives of women in a private space. Ramak recreates this intimate insight through her veiled girls with nose implants, showing the coercive control hidden behind patriarchal beauty standards and theocratic government and the exploitation of women in this cultural context. Through the use of religious symbols, cultural foods and contemporary fashion, her portraits present a sense of incongruity between tradition and modernity. Ramak studies how women change, reshape, and reevaluate their perception of their bodies under these conditions. She revisited the narrative by exploring the nuanced experiences of these Iranian women through a feminist lens.

Ramak skillfully uses appropriate costumes and props to fully reflect the patriarchal oppression in Iran. Through her portrait works, I have a new insight into the layout of the picture. I think I will think more deeply about how to bring the audience into the narrative background through the scenery in the future shooting.

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Critical Annotation

This semester is my second semester. I continued the direction of the previous semester and continued to explore new topics in the field of feminism. Regarding the topic, this time I started from my own feelings and questioned the aesthetic standards of contemporary society by reflecting on the inconvenience and discomfort that women endure in their daily make-up dressing.

Heavy false eyelashes, heavy foundations, tight clothes or high heels, all of these adornments and cosmetics that are often found in women's daily lives are the starting point of my theme, each created to appeal to the aesthetic standards of society. While these are easy pains to ignore, when you wear them for a day, that pain is magnified. At the same time, I don't think women need to go through unnecessary pain and inconvenience.

The key frames I am working with are primarily portraits from current post-feminist and digital art. And I think this is a rich area of significance. Through my own feedback and that of the women around me, I began to think about whether women's pursuit of society's aesthetic mainstream is due to their own preferences or to a patriarchal social conditioning. Is it women's self-will to keep moving closer to their ‘idealised selves’, or is it the subtle influence of society and their surroundings that has led them to unconsciously pursue the aesthetics of society over a long period of time.

In this blog, I introduce several artists and their works that are closely related to the subject of my project. Among them, there are Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger and other feminist photographers who have made great contributions to the development of the feminist movement. There are artists like Jessica Ledwich and Pixie Liao who constantly explore the path of feminism and challenge the traditional authority. There are also emerging portrait photographers ZhongLin, Cho Gi Seok and so on. These artists and related books provide theoretical and visual guidance for my projects.

The blog documents my research and feelings about them. Some of the artists' bold explorations of social aesthetic frameworks have provided me with new ideas for the development of my work. For example, in Epidermis, the artist shows the real state of women's skin so that more viewers can understand the original state of women rather than the illusion of sophistication, and in Monstrous Feminine, the artist criticises the influence of society's value of vanity on women, and she presents the efforts and sacrifices made by women in order to 'stay young forever' in a grotesque and intuitive way. 'In Monstrous Feminine, the artist criticises the influence of society's vanity values on women. Through the research, I also learnt about the term 'female gaze'. It refers to an art form that presents subjective feelings through a woman's point of view, and I learnt about many artists' positive attempts in this regard and the power of the female gaze itself.

Overall, the work and ideas of these artists have provided me with a great deal of intellectual support for my project this semester, giving me a lot of inspiration and helping me to build my own framework.

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Sophie Harris Taylor

Slight Wounds

2015

Taylor's other project, Slight Wounds, draws on the style of Renaissance paintings, presenting the female body in an oil painting-like texture. The perfect bodies of classical goddesses are at once purely innocent and romantically idealistic. They are depicted as almost inhuman - mythical immortals.

Stylistically and technically, Slight Wounds reproduces this in terms of composition, light and color. However, the women depicted in the painting are not gods; they are real women. Their bodies are covered with scars, strains, bruises and cracks, the details of which are clearly visible. The head of the model has been deliberately cut off to allow for a more visceral appreciation of the mutilation of these women's bodies. Through Taylor's work, we can feel that beauty still exists in imperfection, and truthfulness adds to the story of the characters.

The idea of showing ‘imperfection’ in her work has inspired me to think about the theme of my project and to think about more ways of presenting the content. In my project, I present women's ‘imperfections’ in an exaggerated way, using strong visual impact to evoke people's thoughts about the blind pursuit of social aesthetics.

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Sophie Harris Taylor

Epidermis

2020

Sophie Harris Taylor is a British art and portrait photographer. As shown, Epidermis is a project she developed based on her feelings about her own skin, having come into contact with people who were willing to share their skin stories and having heard them show the unseen side of women's skin. ‘These beautiful women are standing here, unashamedly bare of their skin.’

In today's internet world, we are led to believe that all women have ideal, perfect skin, but the truth is that everyone's skin is not perfect. Many women suffer from conditions such as acne, rosacea and eczema, and many feel pressurised by this and have to hide behind a mask of make-up to hide what makes them truly unique.

Taylor mentioned in the interview that she prefers the presentation of the original image to the refined one, as the advanced retouching techniques nowadays have blurred the perception of one's own appearance as well as that of others. I agree with her point of view, which also coincides with the theme of my project this semester, and I believe that one of the reasons why women are crazy about beauty nowadays is that the development and popularity of retouching technology has made us gradually lose ourselves in our own false sophistication. As people become accustomed to their ‘idealised’ selves, they are reluctant to accept their true selves as they are.

The more skin types we see, the less stigma there is and the less prejudice there is,’ Taylor said.

Epidermis, a project that allows more people to see people's skin for what it really is, represents different skin deficiencies in an honest and open way. It is a challenge to modern aesthetics, boldly questioning ' flawless skin '.