Often challenging the viewer through placing them into a position of heightened anxiety, Chang's works test the boundaries of acceptable taste.
Shaved (At A Loss) 1998, is a key example of her work. Chang, using Laura Mulvey's argument of phallocentricism /voyeurism (Mulvey conveys that phallocentricism is the central device used, albeit often subconsciously, within film / the arts in order to maintain a dominant patriarchal sphere), she sits, blindfolded, with her skirt hitched around her waist, legs splayed, and then brings a razor to her pubic area and begins to roughly scrape away her pubic hair. By blindfolding herself, Chang is at once acknowledging and refusing the dominant gaze and through her shaving off of her pubic hair whilst wearing what looks like a bridal gown she is blatantly denying herself to be victim to the 'passive female' as outlined by Mulvey. Chang poses a threat to the age-old patriarchal values.
I like Patty Chang. I am not a fan of feminist works which seem to cry 'f*ck men!' and impose some sort of attack on the male gender, but I do like how Chang's works seem to maintain a certain amount of humour and irony through her negotiations of women's representation in art / film and popular culture. Just take, for example, Contortion (2000) where Chang puts live eels down her top (obvious phallic connotations )//
Or, in Melons (At A Loss) (1998), we see Chang cutting open her bra to reveal a melon, which she scoops out and eats in an act of auto cannibalism; ironically narcissistic - Chang, devours the female body, refusing to be the passive female body as devoured by the active male gaze, without ever loosing her ironical smile... //
The youtube posted here gives a few more examples of her works ------->>
