Spit Film
2014
Moving image & sound
00:02:19
After watching Paul McCarthy's 1974 "Spitting on the Camera", Gaafar began to question the position of the masculine and feminine in video & performance art and the role gender plays between the artist and the viewer. Equally influenced by her own project, "Things people have said to me" - in which Gaafar recounts fatphobic and abusive comments and physical attacks she has received from strangers, lovers and friends - Gaafar went on to film "Spit Film". Off-camera, the artist's partner repeatedly spits on Gaafar's close-up face. The spit varies in texure and volume, and at times can be perceived as sexual fluids. The ambiguity of the gender of the off-camera spitter, as well as the violence of the action towards a feminine individual, questions the relationship of the feminine body on camera and in contemporary art in general. The position of the artist's face - close-up to the camera and gaze facing down - questions the relationship between artist and viewer, and asks who ultimately has control in a performative space?
"Spit Film" has featured in the following exhibitions and publications:
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Guerilla Zoo's Modern Panic VII, a group exhibition in London, UK in October 2016.
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Melanin Collective's February 2015 zine STRONGER.
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Seeding Art to Grow, a group exhibition co-curated by Sarah Gaafar in London, UK in March 2014.
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