SHE'S CORRECT(ED)

Under patriarchy women are valued as objects to be viewed and evaluated. This leads women to internalise a third-person (observer) perspective (e.g., ‘how do I look?’) rather than focus on their needs relating to the unobservable self from a first-person perspective (e.g., ‘what can I do?’ or ‘how do I feel?’). This observer’s perspective requires women to watch or monitor their behaviour and even thoughts, on a long-term basis.

It is of concern that we live in an environment which glorifies the objectification of women, as bringing value or reward to women. In subscribing to this self-surveillance, we (women) are constantly revising our true wants and needs, denying the desires of the ego. This means we repress our own subjectivity with patriarchal standards. In a repetitive cycle of self-correction and repression, our subjectivity is constantly weakened and we lose the ability to express our own voice. 

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An outcome of the project takes the form of a video in which the artist applies correction fluid directly to her face as a metaphor for this process of so-called ‘correction’. Xinhui's body performs to camera, implicating the viewer in a phenomenological situation in which the experiences of eleven other women are shared publicly and therefore given agency. In visualising the act of ’self-correcting‘ Xinhui makes explicit the harm inflicted upon the women in the process of self-surveillance. In temporarily depriving herself of sight and speech during the performance, Xinhui draws attention to the latent power within such acts of seeing and speaking.

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