Dr Jessica Draper

SELF[i]EXPOSURE: Reflecting on Gender through Smartphones

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In 2022, I led an experimental research project called SELF[i]EXPOSURE (funded by an Edinburgh Catalyst Non-residential Research Fellowship) with a group of students at the Centre for Visual Arts, University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa).

 

Using a mixed methodology that combined photovoice and practice-led research, participants used smartphones to take photographs that they felt captured their own experiences of gender.

 

After feedback sessions where students ‘spoke back’ to their pictures, students chose an image, or a selection of images, to be exhibited in the department Gallery. The project hoped to contribute to social change by investigating what possibilities there may be for reflexive expressions of gender through the familiar process of smartphone photography.

 

The hypothesis was that through capturing their experiences of gender in a process of thoughtful image creation, students could be empowered to develop critical consciousness.

 

Exhibiting the photographs extended the conversation into the university community and beyond, hopefully raising (community and self-) awareness of the many faces and forms of gendered violence.

 

What made this project particularly interesting is that the participants were art students, and thus already possessed developing skills in visual meaning-making, and were thus well-placed to engage in this process of empowered self-representation through visual language.

 

The proposed paper will reflect on this project and what it has yielded. Specifically, what artistic potential did the process hold, and what might it have contributed to challenging dialogues which normalise sexual and gender-based discrimination.