(un)becoming
2021
Reservoir Peacocks
Two-channel video, 7 minutes and 31 seconds
︎ @reservoirpeacocks
reservoirpeacocks.com
“Medusa embodies the petrifying gaze. She brings awe and fear: anyone who would dare look straight in
her eyes, would immediately turn to stone. What an exceptional sculptor!
Survivor of sexual assault by Poseidon, she was cursed by Athena with snake-curls and an inescapable
talent. Medusa, the punished victim, invokes hatred for her superpower: she is able to see, without being
seen. In the ever-present patriarchal propaganda of Greek mythology, what can be more monstrous than
the power of the female gaze?
We juxtapose Medusa with our own construction of the Peacock, this contemporary monster who
disclaims the power of the male gaze over it, disobeys the societal expectations and responsibilities, and
presents itself to the world for what it is: an unapologetic magician. Curly, colourful, furious, poisonous,
outrageous, extravagant, fabulous in its fables. The millennial woman who assumes her empowered,
vigilant, idiosyncratic, multidimensional self, and embraces her radiance and luminosity.
What if Medusa was not really beheaded by demigod Perseus, but trapped in the mirror, the weapon of her
conquest, eternally looking outwards from the inside? Could the mirror, the popular symbol of female
vanity, come to materialize the very heterotopia of the female condition itself? Both Medusa and the
Peacock inhabit this space of “otherness”, the eternal Other that femininity represents in the dominant
androcentric narratives. But instead of succumbing to a paralyzing powerlessness, they emerge as
creators and agents of their own story.”