In an intimate space it can feel slightly uncomfortable, voyeuristic even, to watch Lisa Schamlé draped as a living part of her own performance/installation on a mirrored object. In the mirror, Schamlé looks not only at herself, but also back at you, seeking contact with her audience in order to involve it actively in the process taking place.
In this third and final part of her trilogy on sexuality, Schamlé reclaims the autonomy of her body from where it has been lost: in the public domain, that abstract area where the female body is always exposed to the objectifying and normative gaze of the other. A gaze that has an absurd degree of power over the way women see themselves, and through which they often judge themselves, and each other, mercilessly.
Schamlé strives to escape the suffocating dictate of an idealized body image. This raises the question whether in art the gaze can become inquiring rather than judgmental.
Winner of the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant 2024.
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