Anglerfish Complex
“The female anglerfish comes in many shapes, sizes, colours and shades…of ugly. It’s like a rainbow…of ugly.”
- Hosea Jan Frank aka zefrank, True Facts About the Angler Fish*.
Anglerfish Complex is an installation accompanied by a series of four performative art videos that are played for the audience to observe while in a space that is akin to to bedroom.
The motif of this work is the anglerfish, more specifically the female anglerfish. Mainly because the male anglerfish are smaller, and their only purpose is to be the gonads for the females. I familiarised myself with this sea creature because the abnormal and creepy appearance is what attracted me to the it as well as it’s dynamics. The female anglerfish is more dominant than the male in terms of size, sexual dimorphism and purpose. There is a specific fascination and familiar identification with the deep-sea anglerfish who lives 6600 feet deep in the sea and it’s more uncanny appearance in comparison to the other species of the anglerfish.
Establishing the anglerfish in terms of identifying to configuring my personality and my femininity is a source of comfort, while at the same time carrying feelings of insecurity, misanthropy and misery. I have studied and made work on how the feminine body and ideal are observed and critiqued, so now I want my femininity to be observed and judged. These performances were filmed in my bedroom, thereby in a metaphorical sense it is like watching a deep-sea anglerfish in a fish tank.
Embodying the anglerfish allows me to envision a personality whose traits consist of being cringe-worthy, delusional, pathetic, sexually abnormal and self-deprecating. While this is an invasion of privacy and uncomfortable viewing, this self-exposure and vulnerability is a dominating presence in these performances and to test the extent of the comfort of the viewer’s experience.
Anglerfish Complex was exhibited in the Whitecliffe BFA Graduation Exhibition in November 2021.
*YouTube video
