EYE ACTION, South Extension Part II, New Delhi
March 4, 2006
During her 3 weeks visit in New Delhi in February-March 2006, Karoline H. Larsen did a lot of research on sexual harassment and genderroles in India. Upon all the information she received mostly through women´s help organizations, indian female artists activists, foreign girls living in india, and indian male students – she chose to carry out an EYE-ACTION in New Delhi on March 4 at 10pm-11pm in the square South Extension Part II. She was told by Indians how Indian men stare at womens’ breasts all the time, consciously or not. This is only the smaller part of what is called EVE-TEASING by ROAD-ROMEOS in India, ranging from staring to actual rape and molestration of both women and men. For the EYE ACTION, she made 12 pairs of extra eyes in paper and black tusch. She wanted to hand out extra ´breat-eyes´for the girls to stare back at the men. She worked deliberately with humor and direct contact in the street, not wanting to expand the cultural gap between men and women.
It was not crucial to actually find Indian girls in the street, and give them an extra pair of eyes. It was much more important to make the men question and debate what she was doing in the street, and why the Indian girls were missing. Some of the men got the point – that she was joking about the fact that men notoriously tend to stare at women´s breasts. But only a few men were aware of their own offending behaviour, or they simply didn´t mention it. Karoline didn’t want to judge indian guys, but to open public space to Indian women in a symbolic way, trying to bridge the mental gap between the sex, to broaden communication, bring ‘play-full-ness’ and bring ‘no-fear of meeting’.
