In Vampirical illusions about real people a manic smile; consume three images wash my right hand and throw up, Zoe Jackson presents a series of statuesque painting/drawing/water-feature hybrids. This body of work explores the effects of popular image culture on the feminine subject’s corporeal experience. Jackson wonders whether this experience is dictated not by the individual subject but by the patriarchal capitalist order that, accelerated by the internet and technology, has the subject self-inflicting a misogynistic gaze in what has become a constant cycle of re-sharing and re-inscribing oppressive imagery – a system that forces the individual to become complicit in her own oppression.
Whilst thematically absorbed in the digital present, the work employs painstakingly slow craft-driven analog processes that make themselves known through the layering of abrupt materials and faint markings. Through these systems that serve to both sensationalise and downplay the images, Jackson toys with her own complicity.
Image: Zoe Jackson, 2018, developmental iPhone photo