luna scales

Eyelids

video 11:06 min. 2020

Questioning our notions of ability and disability, Eyelids involves the camera slowly circling the artist’s naked body, fading in and out while moving closer and further. Its form was inspired by a short film that T.S. Dreyer made about Bertel Torvaldsen’s sculptures in 1949. The voiceover recounts her experience of undergoing an eyelid operation, before which the doctor asked if medical students could watch the proceedings. The film was mostly shot in a studio with a draped background, while the artist stood on a rotating platform; the two people continuously turning her are also visible in the shot. She appears composed, but because standing still is extremely difficult for her, the film acts as a form of self-portraiture that reflects the specificity of her body and experience. She uses a familiar art-historical trope—the naked female body—to address something that often goes unacknowledged in contemporary art, bodies with physical disabilities. Impairments often go unremarked on, or are treated as invisible; on the other hand, in certain situations, as when the doctor requests an audience for the surgery, they are objectified or treated as pedagogical. The film suggests that how bodies are seen changes how they move through the world, and even conditions that go unseen by others might be hyper-visible to the person who experiences them. It also complicates any notion of a “normal” body: if one zooms in close enough, variations will become visible. 

Link to excerpt of the video. For access to the full version, please contact the artist.