Patty Chang's Performance Pieces

Performance artist Patty Chang creates pieces that deal with scopophilia or voyeurism, best described as “the love of looking”, a topic that goes hand in hand with the issues of gender roles in society that Chang also represents in her work. Chang particularly addresses issues of gender roles through her confrontation of female representation in art, film and popular culture as a whole. In Chang’s video clip entitled, “Shaved (At a Loss)”, she sits herself on a chair in front of her audience, hikes up her dress to expose her vagina and then proceeds to, very roughly, shave off her pubic hair. The entire duration of “Shaved (At a Loss), Chang is blindfolded. In this piece Chang presents consumer culture’s fetishization of the ”flawless” female figure, which is outlined by the unattainable body ideals that are portrayed not only in most mainstream pornography, but also in almost all media connected to our society’s popular culture sphere.

Laura Mulvey’s argument of phallocentricism/voyeurism is also referenced in Chang’s “Shaved (At a Loss). Psychoanalysist Laura Mulvey says that the utilization of phallocentricism in all forms of art and media is the way in which men remain in a powerful position; therefore, keeping our society in a patriarchal state. Chang, and all women are disempowered by their lack of penis, and Chang’s lack is made particularly clear by the exposure of her genitalia she exhibits in her performance. The idea of a patriarchal society is furthered by the attention Chang brings to the power the male gaze truly possess over women as a gender, which is largely due to the heavy patriarchy in our many cultures. In “Shaved (At a Loss)”, Chang provides the her audience with the fulfillment of what the male gaze stere...

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... and in a patriarchal society, “the spectator” would be assumed male; therefore, an explanation of the Western culture’s catering to male desires in the fields described.

Chang’s position of discomfort and self-torture could possibly be interpreted as a metaphor for the relations that Berger makes between, gender, nudity and the power that coincides with both of them. Women undoubtedly lose power when they become “the surveyed” or the victim of the male gaze. In the position of “the surveyed”, women simply become objects for men to enjoy and their power as individuals decreases, especially if they are exposed by nudity. These three traits are all illustrated in not only Chang’s piece but also in Western pop culture as a whole, which proves the intelligence of Chang’s piece in it’s ability to encompass an entire social issue in one dialogue-free performance piece.