Lily May Muir
Lily Muir’s current work focuses on themes and issues surrounding female objectification, sexism within the workplace and everyday sexism within casual language. Her practise involves working closely with different female subjects with whom she develops an ongoing dialogue with as they perform in front of the camera. Once a strong relationship between Muir and subject are built through a series of conversations, observations and interviews, she employs a variety of methods when producing digital pieces, including video installation, photography and digital manipulation; often demonstrating an intense engagement with her chosen feminist issue. The intensity created within her work is not only demonstrated through the subtle and slow movements of her female subjects, but also through her highly controlled and structured filmmaking techniques, lighting and cinematography.
Muir personifies the camera to physically depict society’s sexist and objectifying male gaze over women as her subjects remain trapped behind the screens, the camera therefore assumes the powerful role of the oppressor. Her politically confronting work becomes an insightful reflection on gender and sexism, as Muir hopes to create an environment where spectators are invited to reflect on such political issues.









‘A woman must continually watch herself. She has been taught and persuaded since a child to survey herself continually. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another…’
‘One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women, but also the relation of women themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is in fact male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object.’
(John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972)


My work has heavily revolved around confronting the political and social issue of women being presented as sexual objects within society. The Objectification theory, has been one of the main contextual references behind my work. The theory provides insight into a sociocultural context, which sexually exploits the female body within society; essentially equating a woman's worth to only her apperance, body and sexual appeal/function.
I photographed and filmed women rotating on poles as it resembles the same motion of cars rotating on turntables in car dealerships and showrooms. This opens up the discussion about similarities between the exploitation and sexualisation of the female body and the way in which cars are also fetished and objectified.
Historically, pole dancing was an extremley sexualised spectatle created to please men; exploiting and degrading the female body. Women are now fighting to reclaim the sexualised performance for men and changing it to a sport and empowering art form. This body of work aims to question how society view and treat the female body. It does so by juxtaposuing the differences between the male and female gaze.
*Roll your cursor over the images*
I looked at the glossy surfaces of cars and experimented with applying similar, shiny textures to the female form.

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