The Mirror Test (2015)
Installation shots at MMMother show at The Darnley Gallery East London for National Women's History Month 2015
The Mirror Test is an ongoing project which re-appropriates found magazine and internet images printed onto mirrors: to reinterpret the performance and construction of gender roles in a patriarchal world; and question our troubled and contradictory relationship to animals and nature. Inspired by Animal Studies, Neuroscience and Eco-Feminism, the work explores human and animal consciousness, and analogous behaviours and emotions: such as empathy, fear, sorrow, and anxiety.
The mirror test, an animal behavioural technique developed in 1970 by psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. attempts to measure self-awareness in non-human animals, through self-recognition. In essence, to determine whether non-human animals possess consciousness.
CJ Adam's theory of animal and woman as the ‘absent referent’ also informs the work: the objectification and control of women and animals as consumables and commodities, in relation to the patriarchal politics that dominate our culture,
“These issues are “in our face” all the time. We do not perceive them as problematic because we are so used to having our dominant culture mirror these attitudes. We become shaped by and participants in the structure of the absent referent [...} Animals are consumed literally and women are consumed visually and through sexual access to our bodies the same process of objectification and fragmentation is at work. But advertisements make this process appear innocent. No one seems harmed. The double entendres, the puns, the visual substitutions – they are humour(ed?) by the dominant culture about women and the other animals who are made consumable, made into objects.” - Carol J Adams
The mirror test, an animal behavioural technique developed in 1970 by psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. attempts to measure self-awareness in non-human animals, through self-recognition. In essence, to determine whether non-human animals possess consciousness.
CJ Adam's theory of animal and woman as the ‘absent referent’ also informs the work: the objectification and control of women and animals as consumables and commodities, in relation to the patriarchal politics that dominate our culture,
“These issues are “in our face” all the time. We do not perceive them as problematic because we are so used to having our dominant culture mirror these attitudes. We become shaped by and participants in the structure of the absent referent [...} Animals are consumed literally and women are consumed visually and through sexual access to our bodies the same process of objectification and fragmentation is at work. But advertisements make this process appear innocent. No one seems harmed. The double entendres, the puns, the visual substitutions – they are humour(ed?) by the dominant culture about women and the other animals who are made consumable, made into objects.” - Carol J Adams