Bag

Bag is a video work from 2014. It begins with a close view of a woman’s head. She puts a transparent plastic bag over it, ties it herself, and begins to suffocate. A pair of male hands enters the frame, straightens her lowered head, and draws a red lipstick mouth on the surface of the bag, where her lips should be. The hands leave, then return with scissors and cut the drawn mouth open. Only then does the woman get access to air: she gasps, breathes heavily, and falls.

The work literalizes the metaphor of woman as a wrapper, container, surface, and decorative object. The plastic bag is transparent, so the woman remains visible, yet it deprives her of air and speech. Her face does not disappear completely; instead, it is overwritten by an externally produced image of femininity. The red mouth is first a cosmetic sign, not a living organ. It represents expression without voice, sexuality without agency, and visibility without freedom.

The male hands appear to help, but their help is inseparable from control. Before they cut an opening for breath, they arrange the woman’s head and draw the image through which she is supposed to be seen. The possibility of breathing comes only after the decorative surface is violently opened. In this sense, the mouth becomes both a wound and a passage.

The video speaks about internalized violence as well: the woman puts the bag on herself. The work does not present oppression as something that comes only from outside. It shows how social forms of femininity can be learned, repeated, and embodied until they become life-threatening. What looks like an image, an adornment, or a wrapper becomes a suffocating structure.

At the same time, the final breath is not a clean liberation. It is painful, physical, almost animal. The work ends at the threshold between image and body, decoration and survival, imposed silence and the minimal act of staying alive.

Video, 00:25, 2014