Objectively · Objectifying · Objectification — a figurative drawing workshop I’m facilitating inside Eve Song — A Happening at the University of Pretoria.
Models pose as objects (a chair, a doorway, a wave, a letter of a name) and the room draws them. Taking objectification at its word, under active and revocable consent, we ask what the act becomes once it is chosen rather than done to someone: a playful, careful session, open to all levels. Everyone in the room is a co-author: the models pre-brief and co-author the prompts, with veto. It doubles as a live test of Nussbaum’s argument that objectification, under consent and rough equality, need not be a harm, in the artist-and-model tradition that argument rarely reaches.
The workshop grew out of the same practice as the three composites showing in the programme: Study of Eve, Shroud of Eve and Twelve Refractions. The thinking behind them is in the companion essay, How to See Eve.