Alevtina Kakhidze. I Can Be A Girl With Blue Eyes, 2005. Video performance, 2’11’’ (two videos of the same duration)
Description
The work I Can Be A Girl With Blue Eyes consists of two videos in which Alevtina Kakhidze puts blue lenses over her brown eyes. This statement was prompted by a comment that this eye color would look natural on the artist. Kakhidze marks this remark as painful, as she is of Ukrainian-Georgian descent. Today, the work can be read from several critical perspectives. On one hand, as a feminist critique by the artist of imposed conventional standards of female beauty; or, as researcher Valeriia Shiller notes in her text for the book Why There Are Great Women Artists in Ukrainian Art, conversely, as an assertion of personal choice in constructing one’s identity[1].
Anyone can buy colored lenses.
There’s a wide selection.
They’re amazing: emerald, gray, deep brown.
Of course, there are blue ones.
Just imagine, anyone can be a girl with blue eyes.
And so can I.
By the way, I have dark hair, and I’m convinced it will suit me. And at the optical store, they assured me that no one will notice the difference. That is, I will look natural…
It was very painful. [2].
- Valeriia Shiller, “Alevtina Kakhidze ‘For Men Only, or Suitor-Disguised, Appear to Me in the Mirror’” in Why There Are Great Women Artists in Ukrainian Art, ed. Kateryna Yakovlenko (Kyiv: Publish Pro, 2019), p. 155.
- Commentary by Alevtina Kakhidze, 2005.
