Penetrated Surveillance

This project, started during my Masters in Fine Art with Falmouth University, began as a study into ageing and ageism. It has developed into a much wider study of what it is to live in a female body in contemporary culture. It on exploration into how we are conditioned to see our bodies through the lens of Penetrated Surveillance. I define this as:

“The constant checking of oneself against an ever changing criteria for social acceptability. The torturous drip, drip of problems you didn’t realise you had, [with] solutions offered in increasingly invasive and expensive ways. It calls for all-consuming, 24/7 checking, judging and comparing”. (Susan by Nicky Ruddick. Little Scorpion Press. 2025).

The project is auto-theoretical, combining lived personal experience with academic research into and feminist theory on: accumulation and early capitalism (Federici); the dualisms of human/nature, reason/emotion, mind/body and male/female (Plumwood, Gaard); shame and the female body (Ahmed, Cluff, Junge); ‘housewificiation’ and beauty (Mies, Hurd Clarke); and ageing (Gullette, Woodward).

Through a combination of writing and visual art, Penetrated Surveillance seeks to examine how girls, from a very early age, are conditioned to look upon their bodies critically, how they are taught to associate shame with natural bodily functions, and to understand how the ‘beauty industry’ uses insecurities and an ever changing criteria for what is beautiful to exploit women for power and profit.

The project sets out to reexamine the word ‘beauty’; to identify, challenge and ultimately reject this capitalist way of seeing so that we are able to view our bodies objectively and appreciate our real beauty - natural beauty, not as an invisible makeup trend, but in the way we were really meant to be seen. Importantly, the project seeks to reclaim ageing as a source of wonder and power.

Finally, the aim is to share the whole process with other women so that they can become free to live happily in their own bodies.

The next stage of the project is to align materials with the conceptual concerns. Using a range of organic, natural materials such as wild clay, textiles with natural dyes and weaving, I want to explore how material processes and forms can mirror the beautiful imperfections of the female body.

See below for the initial stages: