BusyWork III is a durational gesture in which Vanessa Mercedes Figueroa is within a white space, empty, except for a flatbed scanner on the ground. She is in stiletto pumps, a short grey skirt and a tight white blouse. Her hair is styled and her makeup is done, her visual appearance is coded with the same signifiers as the version of herself who is a cocktail waitress: contour, eyeliner, false eyelashes, lip gloss, her face sparkles and her hair is straightened. She enters the frame and the scanning begins. Throughout the course of the video she is scanning body parts meticulously, and as completed, she stamps the surface area with a red ink stamp reading APPROVED with a small thumbs up illustration. By the end of the gesture, the majority of her visible skin which has been exposed to the scanner's bright white light has been stamped like a document. In the final cut of this video, there is extensive digital manipulation: creating multi-channel videos within the video, digitally creating repetition and obstruction, hiding views up her short skirt, or creating many versions of herself which exist in digital space with one another. This work evaluates the functions of gaze, stillness, pose and reduction, and her aim is to actively disrupt them all through her gestures steeped in irony and caricature, embodying a visually idealized submissive woman, yet simultaneously refusing to give it up. What a tease.

BusyWork III was screened from July 7th to September 7th on the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen curated by Katrina Orlowski