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Junior Thesis Exhibition

Orchids

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Nicole Daskas - Pretty Little Flower Pretty Little Flower is a three-channel video piece in which I perform significant events from feminist history. Each video is designed according to a specific flower with symbolic meaning relevant to feminism. I would like to first acknowledge that the history of feminism has its problematic aspects, as it focused extremely heavily on the advancement of only upper class white women. In Pretty Little Flower, I adopt the aesthetics of specific eras and then insert myself, a half Asian woman, into this history. I also chose to focus on events with relevance to contemporary society; I do not view Pretty Little Flower only as an exploration of history. Rather, I see this work as an examination of longstanding views and expectations of women.

I utilize flowers in each video as a metaphor for the expectations of women: delicate, beautiful, graceful, and fragile. The flowers chosen for each video lead to the overall design of each backdrop and set. The first video features white orchids, and in this piece I perform as a fifties housewife. Betty Friedan’s 1963 novel, The Feminine Mystique, describes the overwhelming dissatisfaction felt by women whose only role was to perform domestic duties. These women, predominantly white middle class women, were seen as the epitome of femininity. Girls got married younger and younger. Women dropped out of college to start families. While Friedan did not represent all women, I wanted to focus on this book and this era because the themes and issues addressed in the work do hold true to an extent in today’s world. This is not just an issue affecting middle class white women, and it never has been. Domestic duties and childcare are tasks that fall disproportionately on women. According to a NY Times article from this year, women spend an average of 4 hours a day on domestic labor, and men only spend 2.5. This is 4 hours of unpaid labor women are working in addition to their paid jobs. Although there has been progress in terms of gender expectations and behavior, there is still an underlying assumption that women are to be caretakers, and to put the needs of others before their own. This piece has been recontextualized by the pandemic and quarantine. Now viewing this piece, I think about how much more domestic labor is being shouldered by women who are locked in the house with their families. To highlight these expectations of women, I perform in a fifties style dress while washing, sewing, chopping, cooking, and eating the orchids.

In the second video, I wanted to focus on sixties and seventies protests. The sunflower is utilized in this video. The specific movements which inspired this video were: the 1968 Miss America protest in which women burned cosmetics and beauty products in the Freedom Trash Can, 1969 abortion speakouts in which women fought for their rights to their own body in response to an all-male government hearing about abortion, and a 1970s protest in which feminsts disrupted a state senate hearing to bring attention to the Equal Rights Amendment. In this piece, I recreate the freedom trash can as well as paint protests posters with the following slogans: Sisterhood is powerful, ERA YES!, and Safe Legal Abortions for All Women. I then toss the sunflowers into the freedom trash can and let them burn. The issues facing women in the sixties and seventies are still present today. The ERA, a proposed constitutional amendment which guaranteed equal legal rights for all citizens regardless of gender, was never ratified. Despite the decision of Roe v. Wade in 1973, there have been state- enacted restrictive laws and blocked federal funding to try to prevent women’s healthcare. Additionally, anti-choice lawmakers have worked to overturn the decision since its passing. If they are successful, women in 22 states would be at high risk of completely losing abortion rights, especially depending on status such as income and immigration status, disporportionately affecting women of color.

The third and final video piece is based on Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth. Published in 1991, the book details the process by which intense standards of physical beauty have replaced other forms of oppression. As the woman gained power in other areas of society, the beauty myth became ingrained deeper and deeper into women’s brains. Women “gained legal and reproductive rights, pursued higher education, entered the trades and the professions, and overturned ancient and revered beliefs about their social role” (Wolf, 9). However, women still did not feel a sense of freedom. This sense persisted, even among First World women, who had more power than any other women in the world. This myth tells women that physical beauty, which is inseparable from conformative gender behavior, is not only desirable but also a necessity. I chose pink roses as the signifiers for beauty in this piece. As I fix my hair, apply makeup, paint my nails, and obsess over my appearance, I absentmindedly knock over and shatter glass vases of roses. The cosmetics as well as the set are overwhelmingly pink to reference the standards by which young girls are raised. The pink-blue girl-boy binary is suffocating and restrictive. Even though The Beauty Myth was published in the early nineties, its message still holds completely true. Wolf explains in her work that the beauty myth morphs over time, manifesting in new iterations rather than disappearing altogether. While the early 90s may have seen heavily photoshopped images in fashion and lifestyle magazines, now those images appear on social media and are just as damaging for women. Industries such as cosmetic surgery and dieting are preying on and profiting off those insecurities.

Sound has a prominent role in this piece. All the ominous, horror-inspired sounds were achieved by manipulating organic sounds from the videos themselves or made with kitchen utensils. The sharpening of a knife, or the sound of a knife on a cutting board becomes almost threatening when slowed down or played backwards. The sounds do not align with the actions happening, but rather function as a soundtrack. The only time the sound aligns is the final shot in which the flowers are burnt and the fire crackles. The noises make viewers uncomfortable, even anxious as they watch me perform restrictive gender expectations and the ways women have fought back against these roles.
Women's rights, binary gender structures, and power are three themes which carry through my art practice. With this piece, I wanted to highlight the exclusivity of feminist history and represent it in a more inclusive way. I also wanted to make it clear that the issues that women have faced for decades have not gone away or been solved; they are very much present, whether it be the same struggles or new iterations. I see this piece as a continuous work with contemporary relevance. Oppression has not ceased to exist, it has just morphed into new iterations.