Steel Butterfly

"Steel Butterfly"

Details of "Steel Butterfly"

The "Steel Butterfly" is one of my current works in progress. It is a portrait of Imelda Marcos that I had digitally printed to be 60 x 75cm. After gaining risk assessed permission from various people within the University, I was then able to tape down the portrait at one of the school's busiest entrances. This was done with the intent of having 3000 pairs of feet walking all over the portrait - a pair of feet for every pair of shoes that Imelda Marcos owns. The ironic thought of having "the people walk all over her" seemed like an interesting catalyst for political dialogue. I thought it would have been interesting to film this process so I rented out a handycam from the University equipment department. 

Creating of "Steel Butterfly" 

The plan commenced as I set up at 8:30AM (30 minutes before the University was due to open) and filmed until 3:00PM. I got approximately 6 hours of footage and 3000 people visiting the piece. However, from those 3000 people only 1500 actually walked all over her portrait. I noticed that in general participants from Asian heritages tended to avoid the image (as a sign of respect), whilst those from older generations had absolutely no problems with walking all over her portrait. Some people from the older generations even danced on her!

When asked why they refused to walk on her portrait, most participants said either "it felt wrong to walk on someone's face" or "her face is just too pretty to ruin." It was at this point I realised that a new theme had arisen from this project - the idea that beauty is power. This discovery approaches some very feminist themes, which could be continued another day. This correlates well towards Marco's biography as she started off as a beauty queen in the Philippines, before eventually becoming the first lady alongside Ferdinand Marcos. The variety of body languages that my participants were creating was very interesting to study, which gave me something to do as I sat there for more than six hours.

At the end of the day the glossy surface of the photograph turns out to be really dusty and scratched. This was precisely the surface I was looking to create from contact with 1500 pairs of feet. Unfortunately not everyone from my 3000 participated by making contact with her portrait, instead I was able to derive a new conclusion from their responses. The six hour long video was then edited to be sped up and last 20 minutes however I found that this video did nothing to either support or take away from the overall concept. If anything it was just an amateur attempt to document the creation of this piece. The framing could have been done better (because I framed according to angles that wouldn't obstruct the path of my participants) so I decided to scrap the video piece all together.

I am quite tempted to not use this piece as one my of my resolved and final works, because of its politically aggressive nature. This is one of my first times creating political art and since Imelda Marcos is still alive and well I am quite paranoid of the negative repercussions that could impact my safety. Due to its creative nature I do want to keep it as a piece of coursework, so I will be submitting it for academic purposes. Following Yoko Ono and Marina Abramovic as my inspirations for performance art, I feel it is my duty as an artist to go ahead, take the risk and present my work as it is. Especially because there is a powerful message that can be derived from the process of performance art, one that makes the piece significant to the time and place in which we currently reside.

If I were to display this in a gallery this piece would have to belong on the floor - the same platform on which it was created. That way the scratched nature of the photograph won't seem out of place if the portrait were to be hung on the wall instead.