This video is inspired by 'The Yellow Wallpaper,' written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in 1892. Gilman's story plays on the notion of the hysterical female stereotype. The narrator suffers from a 'temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency.' She moves out to a remote house in the countryside with her husband who believes that she needs to be kept from 'society and stimulus.' This inactivity allows her no freedom to express herself and the boredom worsens her condition. She conceives a trapped female life form in the confines of the pattern of the wallpaper. She wishes to free this woman, of whom she eventually perceives as herself, a woman she sees 'creeping,' around the grounds of their house. The video represents a female entity in the archaic and claustrophobic setting of an unlived in interior. This ghostly lifeform embodies a trapped, 'creeping' psyche that we do not see, animated, and uninhibited. I aim to represent the creeping, dipping, ducking, and hiding of the evasive psyche that 'tears' free and doesn't want to show itself. I want to express both the notion of release and the frenzy of a suppressed self. In all elements of the work, I aim to create a sense of unease. I believe that this is a relevant notion to everybody in their own lives. We are constantly posing. We control how we appear and how we act. We show different aspects of our personalities to different people. We have the self that we show to others, and the self that we keep to ourselves. There is tension between these two.
