Objectify This

When Fafi was eighteen, she started sneaking out of her parents’ home to make public art. Her work, which is cartoonish, features what her myspace page calls “powerful and active” images of girls. Fafi, now thirty-one, lives in France with her husband and children and travels the world to install her rogue pieces, which she also often paints or draws with conventional materials. She prides herself on “exploring femininity through stereotypes,” and in the graffiti and fine art scenes, she “is known for her images of sexy and liberated girls.”

Yet the girls depicted in Fafi’s work straddle the line between pornography and anime, calling to mind both the psuedo-demure look of the woman playing the little girl- objectifying herself – and the real woman’s conscious employment of her own sexiness for attention and power. A google image search for  Fafi  reveals more pin-up style cliches than cigarette-smoking discontents, but Fafi’s characters often retain a sex-goddess defiant sneer that reveals that they’re just in this for the money, and they’re ready to go home to their cat and watch 30 Rock.

I may be exaggerating some of the agency here- there are certainly some wardrobe malfunctions going down, which are the classic passive-aggressive expression of an objectified female sexuality. It’s interesting, though, that Fafi dubs her creations “funny, sexy, or aggressive” – all the erect nipples do imply arousal and an intent to titillate the viewer, meaning that both character and audience participate actively in the sexual interaction of viewing and being viewed.

Fafi’s art includes some peieces about racial beauty standards, including this one to the right. But most of her work centers on a sexy white female character who is actively soliciting sexual attention from the viewer. Notable exceptions include ‘Angelina,’ who is paying no attention to the viewer since she’s jacking off on a bearskin rug, and ‘Irina’, who is playing with death heads on sticks – perhaps a postmodern reading of the angel-and-devil advisors that originated in Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus?

Or maybe I’m just giving Fafi too much credit here.

“Fafi has completed murals throughout the world in places such as the United States (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco), Japan, Germany, Belgium, Tunsia, Spain, Portugal, Canada, and Hong Kong. In December 2002, Sony released her time-capsule toy set featuring six of her characters and 2005 marks the release of “Irina,” a large scale figure by Necessaries Foundation. In addition to being in numerous magazines, her first book, Girls Rock, was published in 2003 and Love and Fafiness: girlie art by Fafi was recently released as a Japanese exclusive. She also has a clothing line of shirts and handbags and has been featured in MTV Europe’s style show “Mash” and in such style bibles as The Face and Italian Vogue magazines. Continuing her merger with fashion, Fafi is collaborating with LeSportsac in 2007 to produce a full collection of printed bags, as well as a collection from Adidas for Spring 2007.”

In 2006, her work inspired a spinoff from artist Prima Chakrabandhu Na Ayudhya, who created an interactive peice that allows viewers to see what they look like with Fafi’s characters’ signature pout. Fafi’s website is currently down, but you can see collections of  work at this gallery site.