Skin Has No Roots (It Peels Off Easy As Paper)

Skin Has No Roots (It Peels Off Easy As Paper) from Lilith Dillon-Parkin on Vimeo.

Skin Has No Roots (It Peels Off Easy As Paper)

Video installation, 3 minute loop.

This is the first piece of video art I had full creative control over. I produced this as my final piece for Fine Art in my second year of my Extended Diploma in Art & Design course, branching out from the theme of Autobiography.

Autobiography for me is a tricky theme, as it is one I explore in most of my work. All of my work focuses on identity in some way, whether it be physical identity - appearance, urban tribes etc. - or how we view ourselves spiritually, as entities. However for this project I took it in a very personal direction and examined my attitude towards and relationship with femininity.

I identify very strongly as a feminist - in fact, my self-initiated research topic for Art History this year was feminism's influence on art from the 1970s to the present day - and so I have always been aware of and critical of societal constructs relating to gender roles. What is most interesting to me is the idea that being assertive - often read as 'confrontational' - is unfeminine.

In this video I chose a few female archetypes - or rather, familiar female figures in art and media - and presented them in a more confrontational way, interspersing footage of myself in costume with footage of myself visually communicating the idea of inner decay, and the damaging effect of gender roles and the stereotype of femininity in society. This is communicated through the scenes where I am shown in a sterile white room, vomiting blood, and the scenes where I am shown either cleaning off, or putting back on skull make-up; skulls to me have always represented either decay or the idea of stripping someone down to their core.

For the Barbie make-up, I wanted something which would be shiny and mask-like, and immobilize my face somewhat, and so I used layers of acrylic paint, simply painting a new face on top of my own, in line with Barbie's facial proportions. This was uncomfortable, but made for excellent footage when I was peeling it off, and when it became clear where my real mouth - and not the false grin - was on my face. Acrylic paint was so effective, in fact, that I used it for most of the make-up in this video.

I mimicked Roy Lichtenstein's famous 'Crying Girl'; often presented as an image of fragility, I wanted to bring her into the real world, referencing Robert Rauschenberg's assertion that he 'works in the gap between art and life'. In a way this lent the video a somewhat post-modern air, by visually referencing existing art.

I also took on the role of a black-and-white film starlet, showing the truth of their distinctive looks; green make-up was used rather than red, as black-and-white film does not pick up red as well and would leave them looking washed out. I was gratified to see that when I put the colour footage - complete with green make-up - into black-and-white, the same was true even now.

Choosing the soundtrack was vital; I first put the video together to Azealia Banks' cover of Interpol's 'Slow Hands', a song with a heavy percussive beat  which gave the footage a real sense of rhythm. I then changed the soundtrack to a section of Madonna's 'What It Feels Like For A Girl'. This song was perfect for the feelings and ideas I was trying to express, as these lyrics (which I will end this post with) testify:

Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short.
Wear shirts and boots, because it's okay to be a boy.
But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading -
because you think that being a girl is degrading.
But secretly, you'd love to know what it's like, wouldn't you?
What it feels like for a girl?