Script
Yanyu Cai
This project begins with the predicament I face as a photographer trying to create work that supports a feminist agenda, particularly the way the female subject is constructed by pre-existing visual paradigms.
I collage three sets of self-portraits of common visual paradigms through which contemporary women are represented, namely vulnerability and suffering, commercial empowerment and professional success. I contrast these with images of historical movements and legal texts on the advancement of women’s rights. These show how the political expression of feminism has been continually distorted, appropriated and dissolved within the context of postfeminism and consumer culture.
I also place these three paradigms onto one complete female body to express my questioning of why the female subject is so often imagined and constructed through these types of visual symbols.
In Chinese culture, the red thread represents a connection of fate. The arm that breaks free from the constraints of the flat surface from beginning to end expresses both a struggle to break away from the present and a vision of the future.