Behind the Piece: Playboy Revisited with Talia Smith & Zoey Schorsch
Zoey and I’s collaborative piece, Playboy Revisited, was shown at both exhibit locations for ZDS Creative’s 2023 traveling multimedia show, A Focus on the Feminine: Pt. 1 & 2. Not only was this piece the largest-scaled piece either of us had worked on together, it also proved to be one of the most emotionally and artistically challenging creations that was made in our Greenpoint studio. What began as a fun, light-hearted collage for one of our window panels quickly morphed into a body of work that saw many iterations, forms, and physical changes before it’s completion. Over a year-long project, Playboy Revisited not only serves as a testament to our ability to create collaboratively, but a reminder of what it means to challenge yourself and others throughout the creative process.
When we first moved into our Greenpoint studio at the end of 2022, we weren’t heavily focused on decorating the space, as it’s original intent was for us to be able to create art, together and parallel to one another, in an environment meant solely for creation, trail, and error. Because most of the work we were making was body-focused, intimate, and often vulnerable, privacy in our own space was of top priority. Our studio has multiple near-ceiling-length windows that line the side and front walls, giving our neighbors and building visitors a straight eye-shot into our space. To combat this, we started by moving whatever furniture we had in studio to block us from eye-level of those who passed by, and eventually gave into putting solid white blinds on all accessible windows. Because we tend to lean into a more colorful, maximalist style, we saw the white blinds as a sort of canvas, ready to be made into something louder, more visually appealing, and interesting. After Zoey had decided to take her collection of Playboy magazines and remove the covers from different issues to collage over our front door, it was only natural that we decided to use the insides of those same issues to decorate other parts of our space. After countless hours of selecting images, cutting out faces, bodies and limbs, we began pasting a coagulation of naked figures onto one of the white blinds that hung before us—creating a cohesive body of just that; bodies.
Although this piece began on a whim—something that held little meaning to us, a fun de-stressing activity to add to the curation of our space—we began to talk about the way the women we were collaging with were so often depicted, of course, in Playboy magazines that spanned from the beginning of the 20th century to that late 1980s. We noticed that most, if not all, photo bylines were that of men, and that most, if not all, depictions of the women were sharply male-gaze-focused. Again, it’s not like we were really surprised by this, being the materials we were pulling from were absolutely not those fore-fronting feminism or “fair,” equitable representations of the female form. We joked about how we were, in some way, giving these photos of these women a new life—one where they were together, making new shape, taking on new meaning, pulled from the original gaze they inhabited within the pages of each now out-dated issue we cut them from. When it came time to plan both parts of A Focus on the Feminine in 2023, we talked about the different ways our blind collage could be included and exhibited for more people to see and talk about.
Should we frame it? Should we scan it or photograph it, and then frame it? Should we keep it on the blind as is and suspend it from the wall? One question turned into another, and before we knew it, we had cut down the blind completely from it’s original home on the window panel and went at it with various sharpened tools—peeling the women away from their second iteration, and pasting them down in new scattered patterns atop an oval-shaped wooden base that Zoey had cut, sanded and shaped to her liking. This decision was not only one that helped us change the ease of viewibility and form of the piece, but also one that drove me to tears—seeing the collage we worked to hang in our studio turn to crinkled shreds of lifted paper, and worrying about the pieces final output was something I did not know would impact me in the way it did. Through this, conversations of what our art means to us, what collaborating can bring us to do (even when we don’t necessarily want to) and “trusting the process'“ as well as one another, surfaced, and inevitably stayed at the forefront of our creative minds. I lend a great part of my challenges throughout this process to looming ideas of imposter syndrome. Can I call myself a collage artist if I don’t have faith in what we’re doing? If I can’t see the final output’s intended form, but Zoey so clearly can, does this mean I was doubting both our skillsets? Through the fear and the tears, we reassured one another and ourselves that we would be happy with where it ended, that we could always change our original vision—that we were capable of making something impactful together.
After the hard parts were said and done, we made last minute adjustments to the edges of the piece, covered the bare back of the wooden structure with beige linen, and contemplated how we could make such a large-scale structure more wholly derivative of thoughts on introspection and deeper meaning. Queue the idea to shatter a mirror, hand-pick the shards that were made, and paste them alongside the naked bodies of the women we worked with—and in came the idea of self-reflection, quite literally staring back at the viewer. Some of our favorite moments resulting in the creation of this piece were seeing how viewers at both The Newport Art Museum and our Nolita pop-up reacted to the reality of what they were seeing, almost as if by our own will. Every encounter with the piece seemed to happen in steps: 1. A realization that they were looking at a giant formation of nudes in. apublic setting 2. A second realization that the closer they peered into the naked bodies in front of them, the easier it became to see themselves ingesting the media they might have otherwise delightfully done in private. And finally, 3. Either pulling away from their own reflection in the piece, or peering in deeper, pointing out favorite forms as they went.
Many viewers also started a conversation of representation with Zoey and I based on the seemingly thematic identity of the women featured—most white, most thin, all young. This brought us back to conversations of source material and representation in multimedia art; knowing that we used a publication historically known for a lack of accurate, fair representation of not only women, but women with a wide range of ethnicities, origins, body types, ages and other varied demographics.
Playboy Revisited now homes itself back in our Greenpoint studio, mere feet away from it’s place of origin. To see the piece in person, visit one of our open studio events, or contact us for more information.
