In Conversation with Flora Vever: Art, Sexuality, and the Female Gaze
In this in-depth interview, writer, Sophie Gray, connected with fellow UAL alumni, Flora Vever, to discuss her transformative project ‘À Fleur de Peau’ (a French expression meaning to be ‘highly sensitive’, or ‘on edge’). Created as a reaction to ubiquitous imagery of female objectification in art, it quickly served as the impetus for a more thorough investigation on what it means to be ‘looked at’ and the often complex relationship women have with their bodies as a result of the internalised male gaze. Flora offered some insights into what inspires her creativity, the potential for change and her hopes for the continuous development in her photographic practice.
© Flora Vever
‘Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.’ - John Berger
What makes good art? This is a question I find myself returning to time and time again, within my own practice and when experiencing the work of others. While there is clearly a subjective element to the appreciation of the visual arts, whether in the field of painting, sculpture or photography, subjective appreciation is surely not enough in itself to qualify something as being ‘good’, or is it? I’m not convinced. Art, after all, has the capacity to do more than merely entertain and, in this regard, the very worst kind of ‘art’ is surely that which is easily forgotten. Even art which lacks obvious skill and might be considered objectively ‘bad’ has the power to challenge and to provoke both thought and discussion; a kind of merit in itself. It would stand to reason then that art which can withstand the test of time must combine elements of technique and skill with the ability to challenge and provoke a thoughtful response in the viewer. With this in mind, the work of Flora Vever certainly measures up.
I first encountered Flora’s photography through an online master’s degree in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography. She was living in Kenya at the time and I in France. I remember seeing her images during one of our tutorials and having an immediate sense of awareness that she would be someone to look out for. As an artist, it was the kind of work that inspires you to push yourself creatively, yet simultaneously begrudging the fact you didn’t think to create it yourself.
Currently based between Marseille and Nairobi, Flora is now hoping to turn more of her attention towards issues of gender inequality, aiming to expand on the themes of female sexuality and power imbalance that remain a constant in her work. I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with her about the project that started it all.
So here’s to good art; may we continue to recognise it when it comes along.
Interview with Flora Vever
Sophie Gray: What motivated you to create À Fleur de Peau?
Flora Vever: I’ve always been very intrigued and interested in the way society looks at women's bodies - in society and in art as well. I feel that carrying a female body in today’s society is still very loaded and coming from my own experience of being a woman and experiencing that body, there’s still a massive imbalance and a lot of progress to be made. I started reading a lot of feminist books and feminist essays, maybe four/five years ago, and that also really activated something in my mind and the way I think about these things. The more I read about it, the more shocked I felt about the way that we perceive and depict the female body, the way it can be objectified, the space that women have, or don’t have, in the public sphere.
Originally, I didn’t really know I was going to work on this, I was just very intrigued by trying to do nude photography because I think there was something I was very curious about with how nudes usually look - nude photos of the female body - and I think I just wanted to explore that myself and see how it felt to take photos of me and my friends and then little by little, I realised that actually there was a lot of underlying anger and feelings of unfairness surrounding this issue. It’s like I wanted to shake things up and shake people’s minds, to just expose the injustices women have to face on an everyday basis.
Sophie: That makes a lot of sense and kind of leads onto my next question which you’ve already touched upon, so perhaps you can expand a little bit about what your intentions were for this project and how they evolved over the course of making it? You mentioned you wanted to ‘shake things up’, but was that always your intention?
Flora: No, I mean the first images that I had produced were much more ‘classic’. There were a lot of black and white images and of course, I was trying to represent the strong female gaze and combine that with the relationship I had with the woman I was photographing. The whole experience I think I was trying to completely change the way we do nude photography, but the more I was looking at these images and experimenting with different techniques, I realised that actually I wanted people to see the harshness and the violence that women can experience, just by having the body of a woman. There was a very strong desire to not just create photos that would be beautiful, or aesthetic, but to really move far away from the elegance of black and white female nudes that we have seen so much of and just create something that would be more triggering.
© Flora Vever
Sophie: At what point in the creative process did you decide to ‘interfere’ with the images and what inspired you to do that?
Flora: When I look at the timeline of the whole project, it actually happened quite late. It happened when I felt like I had a body of work that I was satisfied with and because this project happened within the context of a master’s degree, I think we all had this pressure to produce something. I think it’s when I had this feeling that I had already produced a body of work I was proud of, that I felt much more free to experiment. In a sense, it didn’t really matter if what I was going to do would be considered ‘ugly’ or ‘not working’.
It really came from me spending a lot of time in my workshop with the images around me. One of our tutors had recommended printing the images and kind of living with them and through them and that was a massive change for me as well. There was such a strong realisation that the image is a physical object and not just something you have on your computer and something that you can play with and because everything I wanted to talk about was really about the materiality of the body and how by society’s gaze and the kind of very common male gaze that we have all integrated in society, the body becomes something so material and very physical, so it was very natural to try and replicate the same theme through the making of the images.
Sophie: What has been the response to the work so far and has anything surprised you?
Flora: The response has been really good, both within the master’s and afterwards. I was actually lucky enough to exhibit the work in Paris and Nairobi. In both cases, it triggered many discussions around female sexuality and society’s treatment of women and that was something a lot of people came to tell me, especially the show in Nairobi. The room was really big, so we had very big formats and it was also on for longer, so at a certain point many people came to me saying that it triggered a lot of discussion, within themselves, with their friends, with their partners and that was always what I wanted, so I was really touched by this.
One thing that surprised me is that a few people came to me basically asking, okay, so, now we understand there’s a big problem, what should we do? We understand there’s a massive problem for women in society and there’s still this huge imbalance with how we treat the bodies of women, in terms of sexualising them and in terms of allowing them to age…so now that you’ve said all this, what is the solution? As if because I talk about a problem, it’s almost like I’m adding to the problem. I think it’s such a common thing when you put forward feminist related issues, or when you put on your ‘feminist glasses’ and you start seeing the world this way and I was a bit saddened when it happened because I didn’t really know what to say because I don’t have the solution, but I also don’t think that this is what it’s about right now. I’m not creating the problem, the problem exists and I just want to talk about it.
Sophie: I kind of had that a little bit too with mine because I did a project about women’s safety at night and I remember talking to one of our lecturers about it and she said, “you need to look for ways out of this” and I was just thinking, but I don’t know how? That’s the whole point. If there was a solution, I wouldn’t be needing to create this work. I mean, I kind of understood it to some extent because I didn’t want it to be completely depressing and for people to not want to engage with it. I get that angle, that if we’re just focusing on all the negative, then we’re not really moving forward, I do get that, but then I also think maybe sometimes we just need to bring awareness? The fact that it’s still a problem is a problem within itself.
Flora: Entirely. I think there’s something strong in trying to shift the power imbalance and that’s very much something I also wanted to do. I mean, I know I wanted to create those images because I also wanted to regain control of the gaze that I feel society has on my own body, or that I have on my own body, so I think this whole experiment around nudity was also a way to re-own my body. That’s also something that I held very strongly in my other project (We Were Called Witches) in the sense of re-owning the figure of the witch and reclaiming those words and that space. Of course I don’t want to just expose an issue and say, wow, there’s a massive problem and that’s it, but I think for me it’s always been about trying to find a way to shift the power imbalances and kind of reclaim the images, or words, that have typically been used to put women in boxes. I wonder if there is a way for us to play by the rules of society, while still being empowered?
© Flora Vever
Sophie: Well that sort of leads onto my next question and this may be difficult to answer, but do you think that art has the power to effect change, or do you think it’s just a way to start a conversation?
Flora: Oh, that’s interesting. When you said the first half of the question, immediately I was like, yes, of course and then you said, or is it just a way to start a conversation…
Sophie: I don’t mean that in a reductive way. I don’t mean that starting conversations is nothing because of course that’s really important, but I just wonder what power art has to change things. If we’re talking specifically about feminism and feminist issues, what can art do to contribute to the change?
Flora: I guess I sometimes feel like the only way to start change, or to change the narrative, is to start a conversation. At the very least, art is going to have the power to start those conversations and I feel like little by little, those conversations will start being the force that will change the narrative. I kind of see it almost as a first step. I don’t know if that’s too simple, but I guess it’s because you create art that resonates with people, or triggers them in a way and makes them feel a bit unsettled, or uncomfortable that conversations will start happening. Especially when you think more about feminist projects, I think art that makes women feel more comfortable about reclaiming their bodies and the way they look and the way people look at them and the space they can occupy; that definitely has the power to completely change the narrative and also change behaviours. To live a more subversive life, or feel more free to do so.
© Flora Vever
Sophie: Talking about making people feel uncomfortable, I notice your images have quite a visceral effect on me - particularly the one with the wire cutting into the woman’s body and the overwhelming red motif - was that intentional, and if so, how important is that to the overall perception of the work? Was that what you were trying to do?
Flora: Yes, 100%. I mean, I wasn’t aiming at creating pictures that people wouldn’t be able to look at, or would create this feeling of not really wanting to spend time looking at them, but I definitely wanted to create pictures that didn't leave people feeling neutral. Using the colour red felt very natural because when I started working with paint and embroidery it was the colour that I always came back to because it’s so connected to energy and blood and sexuality and obviously menstruation as well, so it just made sense in the context of why I was using it. My hope was that it would create the same feeling when people look at them. At least at that time, it was my way to create a discussion and create images that I felt were powerful.
Sophie: You talk a lot about this idea of ‘to be looked-at-ness’, or being perceived in public spaces. What do you think would, or could, change for women if we weren’t so acutely aware of what it means to be looked at?
Flora: I think the first thing that would change is obviously the gaze that we impose on our own bodies and the relationship we create with our own bodies. I think John Berger is the one to really put it this way, the ‘to be looked-at-ness’ of women is something that we integrate ourselves and then that completely changes the way we perceive our own bodies, the way we relate with them, the relationship and the feelings that we create towards them. It also impacts the way we behave and the way we inhabit our own bodies, the space we allow ourselves to occupy, also the way we allow ourselves to dress, or to shine, or the places we allow ourselves to be in, so I think it would have a major impact on our own gaze and behaviour and the way we also perceive other women and perceive their bodies. It’s hard to imagine how that would become a reality, but I just think that women would feel much more free and safe to express themselves how they want to.
Sophie: Will you continue working on this project, or are you moving onto other things?
Flora: I feel very strongly that this is the type of work I want to continue doing. All of my recent projects are connected in some way and I still feel like although society has evolved so much in terms of equality, the perception of the body and the perception of sexuality and what women are ‘allowed’ to do or not, versus men, is still one of the biggest imbalances and injustices that we face.
Right now, I’m just curious about using other mediums and I don’t know if I will end up doing it, but I think because there's such a strong sense of physicality, I feel like it would be really interesting to experiment with things that have more volume, maybe ceramics, or installations that also have images and embroidery, but I’ve been printing images on fabrics and doing some embroidery on it and I’m thinking how would it look if I hung those up and people could circulate around and interact with them.
Sophie: Now that your work is in the public domain, what are your hopes for the future and its continuation? Have you achieved everything you set out to achieve when making it?
Flora: My hope would be to continue raising these questions and triggering discussions on one side and then also creating spaces for women to feel that the narrative can be changed and that they can feel empowered; they can reclaim spaces that society has created to entrap them. So I guess there are two things: there’s the creating dialogue, trying to change the narrative, but also there’s a very strong desire for me to create this feeling of empowerment, especially for women, but I guess for everyone in general. There's so much more work to do for that and my hope is that I manage to create more work that garners attention and curiosity and makes people want to have these discussions.
When I did my exhibition in Paris, we had a women’s circle at the end where we sat down and there were questions around what people felt and what issues needed to be discussed and for me, that’s the most important thing. I would love to be able to continue creating work that I can combine with gatherings and events where we can be together and face those questions and be courageous and vulnerable together because I think that’s one way to move forward.
Sophie: Perfect! That’s all of my questions. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me, I really appreciate it.
© Flora Vever
Flora’s approach to her work is one I can relate to. Being a woman in art (or in general) can be a complicated way to exist, for we live in a world dominated by men; in a system designed by and for men and while I believe that system also does them a disservice, there is no escaping the fact that trying to operate within an environment that is fundamentally working against us is difficult to say the least. Art provides a space in which to explore and examine the nuances of this experience, but more than that, it allows women to see themselves, as represented by other women. We need more of it. To echo Flora's sentiment, if we continue to be vulnerable together, that is where we will find our strength.
If you would like to see more of Flora’s work, then you can find it across various social media platforms and online publications. Linked below.
Instagram: @floravever
