SWeet and sticky

Building on her research into the archetypes coded for her Masters research, Lizzie focused on exploring the ‘negative’ roles, namely the ‘Evil Woman,’ and the ‘Seductress’. Honey Trap, was born from interest into the latter, and the role of the femme fatale. She gathered vintage pornographic magazines, namely from Penthouse and Playboy, and read the articles and studied the images. Extracting the language used in speaking about seduction and desire from the text, and rearranging these words and phrases created a sensual soundscape recorded as an audio to set her imagery to.

Inspired by the fine line between the sleazy and the sensual, the artist used her own body as a landscape for desire to assume the role of the ‘Seductress’ in front of the camera. But, by also crafting the gestures and abstracted forms as the director behind the camera, she shot in an isolated and intimate manner in order to subvert the typical male gaze of pornography. Luring viewers into a Honey Trap of dialogue about the empowerment of owning one’s sexuality, and retaining her agency while still celebrating form, despite the fear of many Southeast Asian women in revealing their bodies to being overly sexualized, objectified, and scrutinized.