トームのインスタグラム(tomenyc) - 4月22日 07時27分

Angela Tiatia, Lick, 2015 @mca_australia
#AngelaTiatia’s single-channel video Lick (2015) records a performance by the artist in a single take from a fixed camera position. Filmed underwater in the ocean, the video shows Tiatia’s partially submerged body as she attempts to maintain a foothold on the seabed. Light plays seductively off the surface of the turquoise water, fish swim by, and we hear the ambient sound of the pulsing waves. The artist flexes and flails as she resists the incoming tide but is eventually overpowered by its force and floats out of view.

While Tiatia’s choice of title clearly alludes to waves encroaching on the shoreline, it can also be read as a more oblique reference to stereotypes of Pacific cultures and bodies as exotic and desirable. In this sense, the intense focus of the camera on her figure – a cipher for the Western and, more specifically, male gaze – is framed as another form of duress or incursion. Tiatia has made numerous other performances for video that explore similar terrain using the same distilled aesthetic approach. In Heels (2014) from her series An Inventory of Gestures, for example, she repeats a specific movement adopted by dancers in Samoa, while dressed in a figure-hugging body suit and stilettos. Meanwhile, Holding On (2015) shows Tiatia from above lying prone in a swimsuit on a cement slab as a restless tide surges around her.
The representation of the female body is such a strong theme in my work, and it has always been so present. For me, it’s about straddling these two worlds [of Western and Samoan culture].

[BIHAKUEN]UVシールド(UVShield)

>> 飲む日焼け止め！「UVシールド」を購入する