As a feminist artist I have often found myself questioning how to visualize what it means to take up space. Historically, women have been told when, and how they should exist within the spaces they are given. Critical acknowledgement of the lack of personal autonomy afforded to women of diverse backgrounds has only been meaningfully considered in the past few decades. This video emphasizes these gaps in history while pointing to the remaining mental disparity between women and the physical space they take up. What are the different ways that one can occupy a space, and how does the way that we engage within certain spaces affect how we are viewed by the outside world, and ourselves?

In collaboration with Sophie Foster, an art historian and poet, I use visual poetry to engage with these questions, thus depicting the physical and mental aspects of taking up space. I pair short poems written by Foster in response to silhouettes of a moving woman emphasizing the presence and absence of women in certain aspects of life. Calling back to some of the first silent films released in black and white I also acknowledge the complex relationship between women and the screen. Therefore, this work centers film as a physical space within which many women have not been allowed personal autonomy to choose how they would like to be depicted. As a forever repeating sequence of events, this work embodies the cyclical nature of processing how one takes up, or has been perpetually prevented from taking up, space.