Show Me Your Teeth
Acrylic nails, foam, fiber glass, silicone
176 x 80 x 36 cm
“I pivoted my practice during that residency and started working with false nails as a representation or metaphor for the type of femininity that interests me. A femininity with agency that is strong and powerful, dangerous and unapologetic, yet also brittle, delicate and exposed.” [1]
This sculpture by Frances Goodman is made up of hundreds of acrylic false nails, meticulously assembled into a gigantic ribbon on which we can read “Show Me Your Teeth”, a challenge that can be interpreted in many ways, including “show me your teeth” or “show your claws”. Such equivocal phrases evoke the injunction of a forced smile, or a call to both fight and defend oneself. Goodman’s work questions the construction of femininity in our contemporary, consumption-based society; her works thus explore notions of power, (self-)representation and norms: “I am interested in making work that questions how women view themselves and whether the view they have of themselves are constructed by someone else rather than themselves.” [2]
The false nails used by the artist in Show Me Your Teeth are symbols of the beauty industry and our stereotypes of femininity: they can be the standard-bearer, acting as armour for the person wearing them, while remaining individually disposable objects with no intrinsic value. The work also evokes a flashing, illuminated billboard, always delivering the same message that empties it of its meaning. Goodman plays with the shiny, colourful surface of the material she uses: like bait, the nails attract the eye before confronting us with a flickering reality, much darker and more confusing than the dazzling appearance we perceive at first glance.
1 Artist’s citation in. Through the Glass, Sparkling, SMAC Gallery, 2023, p.5
2 Frances Goodman: Spit or Swallow, Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2020
