'Through the looking glass'
My Amma
What a pity she knows no joy!
Her life prescribed by a sense of duty, to a life
of martyrdom.
I never understood it.
She said she had no choice.
(from a poem by Sasi Victoire)
Sasi Victoire's exhibition 'Through the Looking Glass' is a cross-cultural examination of the construction of female identity. In particular it explores the ways in which religion, art, fashion and the media impact on women and their sense of self. Sasi Victoire is a Malaysian Indian woman: born at Port Dickson on the west coast of Malaysia; the eldest daughter of displaced Indian migrants. She moved to Australia in 1970 and more recently has found her new home in Far North Queensland. Not long ago, Victoire's mother passed away, an event which reinforced the artist's yearning to understand her mother's resignation to a life without choice.
This questioning is exemplified in the work Questioning Gaze which is inscribed, 'I rested my questioning gaze upon my mother's eyes'. It is this 'questioning gaze', and the unhappiness she found in her mother, that fuel the artist's exploration and have inspired her 'to challenge existing notions of gender, body politics and power relations .. . '1 Beyond this, the artist believes that women themselves reinforce their subsidiary status in society; through their acquiescence with patriarchy; an issue her work also addresses. Whilst many anthropologists have disputed the subordination of women as being universal, suggesting less dichotomous ways of understanding the role of women in various socio-cultural systems, Victoire sees this as a 'fictionalised anthropological gaze'. In her own experience, 'the dutiful Indian daughter has many demands placed on her spirit' by the... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline