Seeing Red is an installation of mixed media photographic collages that incorporates fashion photographs, newspaper articles, ink drawings, and various household materials. Using luxury fashion advertising as a lens for broader cultural critique, the project disrupts the cycle of visual violence performed against women by forcing mediated fictions and realities into a new vision as graphic and uncomfortable confrontations, ultimately enacting a fantasy in which patriarchal power is subverted.
Through physical cutting and manipulation, Seeing Red addresses the perpetuation of rape culture and domestic violence by visually severing the connection between pleasure and violence through four creative strategies: (1) by repositioning the bodies to create new meaning; (2) dismantling male faces to negate their power; (3) drawing uncomfortable associations between the harmful, normalizing world of fashion with news stories of sexual violence; and (4) blocking the merchandise to prioritize the violent narrative.
The reimagined figures are stabilized with tape and often placed onto a black background, which represents a stage to transform the misogynistic narrative into an empowering one that favors women. Collages are photographed in a studio - to reference the world of mass production - and printed at human scale.