GROOMED

GROOMED, 2016, 12:10 minutes, single-channel video. Grooming is a term used to describe manipulatively transgressive behavior of sexual predators. The video exposes a narrated performance through the singular optic recording device inside a laptop before a minimal set with the blue color once ascribed the value as ‘most spiritual’. Questions around pain, agency, free will, subjectivity, objectivity, and desire in a soft-violence grooming ritual look at a cultural-transactional desire. A rhythmic home waxing process conveys the internalization of behavior as believed to be exercised by free-will, often comes through the privacy of reader imagination and sexual partner pleasing. The apotropaic feature of body hair lost to pornographic cultural acceptance ascribed as sexual liberation, while the preparation for medical procedures can also involve the removal of hair. Conscious or unconscious, the combination of eros, psyche, and economic sign value flow through speech riding the line between sensible cultural critique and neurotic internal dialogue. Filmed in Oslo, Norway, 2016. Groomed is part of the larger body of work: Virtual Material exploiting several aspects of photography while engaging in phenomenological subjects with water, stones, forests, technology, vision, body, perception, ethics. The Virtual Material body of work includes: Trânsito, Teknovisuell Experience, Sonidos, Fleuressence, Relatively Dimensional Still-Life, 1919 in 2017, videos, installations, as prints, projections, wall coverings, acrylic prints, garments. Contact: mariammanart@icloud.com