artist statement

When originally approached to work on Fantasmagoria, I was hesitant to explore the vehicle of fantasy because I believed, at that point, that I did not fantasize. So many forces had robbed of a sexual interior; heterosexism, sexism, catholicism, abuse, living within a colonized body, the pressure to be a "bad girl" within contemporary queer culture -- to name but a few.

The project became a process for me to excavate my missing sexual interior, to find the fantasies, and to fantasize. This struggle took the form of a peep show, where the actual lesbian body is inserted into this bastion of heterosexual spectatorship.

The Weight of Women´s Eyes, the pleasureable fantasy, is notably lacking any representations of bodies, revealing how the erotic functions for me on a mostly aural and gestural level.

Sometimes I Have to Close My Eyes is the paranoid dialectical companion to the former. Here the body is explored, but it is too close, too real, and too difficult to bear. Both fantasies exist, of course, and there is a constant tension and struggle between the two poles as I continue to try and find the fantasies.

The Weight of Women´s Eyes, a single channel videotape, is available through Video Out Distribution video@portal.ca


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