Point of View

Point of View (2018) was a project presented for Women’s Day at Estúdio Quimera, São Paulo, in partnership with singer Mah Mooni, an exile from Iran, where she had been banned from for solo singing. It was a comment on the contrast between the cult of Saint Lucy of Syracuse –the protector of sight, who is represented holding a tray with two eyes– and women’s condition in today’s world, especially in countries like Iran, where the burqa is an emblem of women’s invisibility. Many Iranian women struggle to be able to shed their burqas and achieve a space of visibility in which they can freely look and be looked at. The food in this gastroperformance was white chocolate ganache with chili and rose water, shaped like eyes and served on a tray. The rose symbolized woman’s fragility and the pepper her strength and critical power. The idea was to offer a way of looking that could be internalised and digested while Mah Mooni performed a song about shedding the burqa. During the song, video footage was played of flashy male birds courting ungraceful females, and the question posed was of whether it is natural or even sensible for some human cultures to keep women invisible.