Sound, Sample from Liaisons Dangereuses, Los Niños del Parque (1982) / Editing Assistant, Clare Powell

Sparks Fly navigates the tense path between sexual subjecthood and objecthood, between defining sexuality while avoiding exploitation. This work depicts a club scene, where the women are stripped back, uncontrolled, moving with free-form gestures and tapping into feminine unification. Their compulsive movements allude to the contemporary ‘mating game’: a dance between power and vulnerability.

The glittered body becomes a landscape for sexuality and the performance of gender. It acts as a second skin, or a mirage reflecting the ‘gaze’ and deflecting from what resides underneath. As technology, the propagation of pornography, online dating avenues, social media fueled narcissism and various dial up satiations dominate much human interaction, we must search to find the real amongst this milieu. The glossy pink skin represents this divide by reconciling the organic body with a sparkly plastic surface.

This work attempts to reclaim the female body from a prurient culture by re-examining what it means to be objectified. This challenges contemporary taboos and conventions around nudity, gender, sex and body image. Is this simply providing fodder, adhering to the ‘male gaze’ and objectifying the subjects? Or is this reclamation; a neo-femininity on the brink of fourth wave feminism and redefining a stale, hegemonic theory?

Rose Jurd, Sparks Fly, 2014, digital video, audio, 4:08 min