about
Mia Dang is a Mixed-Media Editor & Director based in New York City,
Currently studying Film & Television Production at NYU.
Currently studying Film & Television Production at NYU.
VOYEURISM
Director, Production Designer, Editor / 2024
Director, Production Designer, Editor / 2024
In a museum filled with nude female portraits, a group of voyeuristic visitors slowly realizes that they're the ones being watched.
Info:
Created for NYU’s Sight & Sound Filmmaking class in response to the prompt “Close-Up,” this project was deeply informed by an art history course I was taking at the time. We studied the often tragic and overlooked backstories of nude female portraits—images that, while praised for their form, frequently reduce complex women to passive objects of the male gaze. I was especially disturbed to learn that statues honoring powerful historic women often show discoloration on the breasts and buttocks from repeated groping by visitors. Rather than being celebrated, these figures are routinely mocked and sexualized.
This film is my response: an exploration of voyeurism in museum spaces. A group of male visitors fixates on nude portraits, only to realize they are the ones being watched. This reversal of the gaze was my way of confronting how easily reverence can turn into objectification. I hand-built the miniature museum set using posterboard & mixed materials to echo the constructed, artificial nature of both the space and the gaze itself, while also achieving the “close-up” prompt.
EST