Poached/Poacher

 

Rachel Prince

Regent's Park College, University of Oxford

 

Poached/Poacher was an installation shown as part of a student-run exhibition at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, in October 2021. Each object displayed in the chest of drawers is made from an egg box cut into sections, then painted and decorated. The work points to ideas of eroticism, dysphoria, objectification, patriarchy, the private and the public, delicacy, refusal and queerness. Different drawers can be opened, but their contents cannot all be seen at once. This piece interrogates gender, sexuality, gaze, beauty, disguise. It evokes the body cut up and dismembered, and my own dismembering of other bodies. This piece asks what it’s like to find a body attractive that is similar to your own. This piece questions the ability of the eyes to glimpse at just one part and not the whole. This piece is about the refusal to see the body as an egg box, about playing along. I am interested in dressing up, drag, the enjoyment in it, the insecurity. What is it like to fight patriarchy but to recognize the ways in which your sexual desires and preferences have been shaped by it? To no longer tell your skin nasty words? To feel good in your skin without looking good to someone else? To like the feeling of being liked by someone else? To wear heels so that you can’t run away? To decide not to overthink it, most days? To be poached, boiled, fried?