Behind The Gaze

Featured Exhibition at The Siegel Gallery, Lehigh University

In this project I combined my passions for fashion and graphic design by creating digital collages in photoshop to express female empowerment.

The art of collage inspires me through the complexity and depth it encompasses. There is so much that can be said through the layers of a collage. Simple images come together and create a whole new story. Women artists have used collage as a means of liberation to express ideas such as women’s rights, femininity, and freedom through creativity. I was inspired by Hannah Hoch’s collages which critiqued how society viewed and treated women. She became a strong advocate for women taking on more significant roles in German culture post World War 1.

The female gaze is the way that women are portrayed through the eyes of a woman instead of a man. But more than just gender, it’s an issue of representing women as subjects having agency. It is the beginning of a new and more balanced form of depiction of women compared to depictions in the past.

In my work I used photos from various fashion editorials to create Surrealist collages where the focus leads you to the woman’s eyes and portrays the female gaze. In art history, women are often depicted in a passive state, looking away from the viewer. However, in my work the women are looking directly at the viewer to reclaim agency and celebrate female beauty and power. I cut into the images and overlapped layers, which reveal the eyes and allow the viewer to feel the strength behind their gaze.