A few years before Disney's
chastely fleshless skullbot, the LA-based Iranian artist Behnaz Farahi designed a less humanoid but also far sexier eye-contact-responsive item called "The Caress of the Gaze". It was admittedly designed to be worn by probably quite a sexy human. Most fashion is. According to
this article, a camera beneath the top's mesh of quills registers not only whether or not the model is being looked at, but also the gender of the onlooker, and potentially even their age, possibly to stop the piece responding too sexily. Seduction doesn't seem to be the point of the piece however, so much as the creation of an article of clothing that can respond involuntarily to its wearer's environment, both physical and social, like hairs rising on a second skin. This is almost the exact opposite of the intention behind Farahi's most recent piece, and the piece that introduced me to her:
Taking its title from an article by Giyatri Spivak, "Can The Subaltern Speak?" is a work about not being looked at. The Barandi masks that inspired it were said to have been worn as a protest against Portuguese colonists. Its eyelashes flutter not in response to the male gaze, but to communicate in a secret language, like the American soldier who blinked TORTURE in morse code while filmed hostage in Viet Nam. As Farahi herself explains however, it is not in fact the wearers of these masks who will be communicating with each other in this language, but the masks...
