Lure is a three-screen videogame-based installation reflecting upon the power and influence of the media that populated the artist’s youth. Drawing particularly from anime’s Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura which had female protagonists and the Gameboy’s Pokemon Crystal which allowed users to select a female character for the first time, the work explores the affect and allure of these virtual manifestations of femininity and the pervasive waves of influence that continue to ripple out from them.

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The work interrogates the traditionally masculine nature of virtual arenas, subverting this stereotype to instead render a more intimate experience without threat and violence and instead populated with seductive and glossy imagery. The work explores the hyper-resonance of this imagery, considering how it struck a chord for the artist as depictions of Asiatic femininity which were largely absent from her lived environment.

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The work reflects upon the power and presence of media, which can be experienced as innocently enticing and joyful, whilst also pervasively shaping one’s ideas of beauty and self. It seeks to show how virtual experiences permeate into physical reality, leaving marks, traces and manifestations within our sense of identity. It considers the quality of objectification (by both the self and others) that exists alongside these renditions of beauty and reflects upon other forms of media spawned by them. ‘Lure’ attempts to situate these states of joy and discomfort as being entangled within one another, as complications that coexist, albeit in tension.

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The work critically and honestly reflects upon the fine line between agency and influence and beauty and objectification. It seeks to acknowledge the light and the dark prevalent in the creation, depiction and consumption of hyper-feminine virtual characters and considers how experiencing these influences the formation of one’s own identity