Pui Tiffany Chow - We’re All Being Looked At

I sat with Pui Tiffany Chow, Assistant Professor of Art at Pomona College, to celebrate her latest show, Susanna, which was on display in Los Angeles’ Phase Gallery. Afterwards, we took a moment to reflect on her inspirations, experiences, and all other fascinating details that make Tiffany the awe-striking artist, professor, and individual she is.

Who is Susanna?

The title of Tiffany’s show, Susanna, comes from the biblical tale of “Susanna and the Elders.” The story follows a married woman, Susanna, whose private bath in her garden sanctuary is interrupted by the prying eyes of two old men. When Susanna refuses to accept their sexual advances, she subsequently faces their false accusation of adultery. This story of Susanna’s turmoil, like many other biblical fables, have been portrayed countless times in paintings, so much so that Tiffany claims, “Every museum you go to has Susanna and the Elders.”

Funny enough, Tiffany cannot recall how she stumbled across the story but remembers being drawn to its representation in paintings throughout art history. As an artist, Tiffany is captivated by depictions of the female form and noticed recurring problematic choices in portrayals of Susanna. Typically, Susanna is portrayed as seductive, exuding sensuality through her inviting eyes and smooth, flawless body draped in white cloth, inviting the viewer to lust for what hides beneath.

“You’re so much thinking about what is being concealed. When there’s a painting of a woman’s back, all you’re thinking about is her front. When she’s covering herself, all you’re thinking about is what you can’t see,” Tiffany states, emphasizing “the spectacle Susanna and her body has become.”

The eroticization of Susanna in paintings drains the original tale of its harmful themes, turning the victim into the cause of her own tragedy in order to give the audience pleasure.

However, one painting stands out amongst the rest. Italian artist, Artemisia Gentileschi’s take on the story is visceral and haunting. Despite several other key distinctions, Tiffany highlights a difference in the portrayal of Susanna’s garden. Instead of the typical lush greenery and clear waters of her bath, Susanna sits atop a cold, gray concrete bench. Tiffany points out that through this stark gray slab, Gentileschi pushes Susanna’s figure to the forefront, almost theatrically, explaining, “She is on stage.” Tiffany further describes several possible reasons for the differences from Gentileschi’s piece to prior interpretations, indicating:

“These paintings were made in the 1600s by a woman and of course! She wants to make us feel uncomfortable. She wants to be like, ‘Look, you are looking at this woman like she is on stage and being objectified.’ So instead of a beautiful garden, she painted this gray bench. That is her refusal to give pleasure to the viewer.”

It is through Gentileschi’s seminal painting that Tiffany was driven to reinterpret Susanna from her own perspective, exploring sex and pleasure and altogether challenging the inaccurate and misogynist retellings of the past.

The Angry Feminist

As Tiffany engaged with Susanna, she too had to grapple with her own identity as an artist. Amidst the stress of creating this series, the frustrations and overwhelming feelings surrounding inequality led Tiffany to identify as an angry feminist, to which her friend responded, “Is there any other way to be a feminist?”

Tiffany then goes on to discuss her qualms with the myth, as Susanna’s fate is shaped by the men around her. Her victimization is a result of men and the investigation that follows to determine her innocence is also led by a man (Daniel). Although Susanna is deemed virtuous and the Elders are put to death, they are merely charged for dishonesty and not the harassment of Susanna. This anger became a big motivation for Tiffany’s creation of the series, choosing to highlight Susanna and question her, decentering the male presence to fully explore who Susanna is.

Tiffany discusses how deeply she connects with the myth because she is a woman. In reference to the myth, Tiffany explains how Western culture requires women to be shy, prudish, and shames expressions that are seen as erotic or seductive. She describes that when she behaves outside of this limiting box, it makes people uncomfortable, explaining:

“When a woman doesn’t behave the way you expect them to, it threatens people.”

Tiffany’s lived experiences and the slow movement of progress towards women’s rights and gender equality have made her the artist and feminist she is, and this is reflected in Susanna, with imagery of her struggle to escape the Elders symbolizing women’s desperation for liberation from patriarchal society.

Abstraction

While many paintings of Susanna and the Elders employ realism, Tiffany uses abstraction instead. She’s always been drawn to abstraction, especially in portraying the body, and uses this particular art technique to reflect the feeling of being in a body rather than how it looks externally.

“Feeling is more real than thinking about what a body looks. Feeling comes in color, form, and shape, and heaviness, and lightness.”

Feeling as form is exemplified throughout the paintings’ portrayal of water. Susanna’s vulnerability in her bath becomes part of her body in Tiffany’s paintings, with shades of blue flooding her limbs. While water can reflect Susanna’s nature, fluid and vulnerable to the forces around her, Tiffany’s depiction of water is more so driven by her “blue summer,” in which she spent her days reading about the color. She found herself fascinated by the fact that there are so many different kinds of blue and its association with abundance.

Another example of feeling through color that Tiffany emphasized was her use of black. The color is often used to stage the figure, pushing it forward as modeled by Gentileschi’s interpretation. To achieve this, Tiffany sought out the blackest paint possible and spent a full week airbrushing the paint instead of applying it with a brush. The effect is a smooth surface reminiscent of an endless abyss.

In the series, black is Tiffany’s refusal to give pleasure to the audience, as Susanna’s staging as a woman in distress, being violated, puts the viewer in the shoes of the accusers, the voyeurs. Previous paintings are rendered beautifully by master painters, making the audience feel that the woman is theirs to stare at and lust over. Like Gentileschi, Tiffany transforms the audience into the aggressor, complicit in the violation of Susanna in her garden, which leaves the viewer uncomfortable and shameful. Moreover Tiffany’s abstraction of Susanna focuses on the character’s emotional experience rather than her body or sexuality, which further refuses to give the audience sexual pleasure.

Throughout history, pleasure was the main priority of the artists depicting Susanna, neglecting to portray the infamous “Elders” of the myth’s namesake. Tiffany noticed that Gentileschi’s piece does the exact opposite, including Susanna’s two accusers hunched over her and violating her. Tiffany takes on a similar approach, including silhouetted hands that grab at Susanna. The ambiguity and abstraction of the hands as dark forms is something Tiffany does intentionally, stating,

“It’s the unimaginable, the unknown, that is scary and powerful!”

The abstraction of the hand really emphasizes the horrific and pervasive nature of the patriarchy, as it exists as a dark and haunting shadow, forever tormenting women.

What’s Next?

Now Tiffany has chosen to dedicate her research to women artists and their representations of women. This has led her down a path of numerous amazing works, notably, those of Mary Cassat, whose portrayal of women was particularly inspiring for her gestural, violent technique. Tiffany felt struck by Cassat’s A Goodnight Kiss, which shows a woman kissing a child, both their faces melting into one another. Violence was also felt in Cassat’s Woman Bathing, as Tiffany felt the tension that is present when looking in the mirror, stating,

“It is quite violent when a woman looks into a mirror… the psychological aspect of ‘How do I look? How should I look?’ It’s this society violence imposed on women.”

Drawing from Cassat, and other artists, Tiffany plans on exploring women’s relationship to mirrors, employing violence and gesture, but blacking out the looking glass. This refuses the viewer from seeing her face, emphasizing the fact that looking a certain way, conventionally attractive or not, is ordinary and not special, removing the pressure of upholding a beauty standard. As Tiffany states,

“It doesn’t matter, it’s just a woman. We’re all being looked at in the same way.”

Tiffany was a wonder to interview and I, alongside many others, will continue to be fascinated by her artistic explorations in the future.