Stella Burns
The Performance of Femininity
My films and research in this project explore the cinematic performance of femininity. I examine how the female body is constructed within a filmic narrative to convey specific rules of femininity. I question the purpose of this gender performance within my work by exaggerating and extending the fantasy of cinema and destabilising the ground it sits on.
The presentation of my female form within the domestic space shows the tension between my own individualised body and associations of filmic female body. I activate this space by performing feminine ideals and activities that connote traditional notions of femininity. Instead of making such tropes demeaning, they act as a broadening of what it means to be feminine in front of a camera as the female represented takes charge of how she/I want to look like.
I foreground my own meaningfully-clothed figure to show how the female body can perform femininity in a way that moves away from the male gaze. Instead the body aims to become an individual creative and desiring subject.
In my double image, the spectator is invited to literally view multiple sides of my presentation. I extend myself past one characterised woman to a multi-faceted presentation of how I see myself and want to be seen.
My use of self-portraiture creates a reflexive view of how I adopt stereotypes and fashion them into my own individual presentation of gender, applied with anxiety and pleasure.