Objectifying her body, the Mauritius born British artist has literally used her figure as a flower vase and photography camera. By placing a light sensitive paper in her mouth and using her lips as the aperture and shutter, Lindsay developed images in a black sack resulting in compelling circular images tinged red by her cheeks.
Mute until the age of seven, Lindsay Seers possessed an eidetic (photographic memory) that vanished when she began to speak. The artist naturally found comfort in recreating this lost ability through the lens of a camera.
Extramission 6 (Black Maria) is a video projection installation acquired by Tate. It is a seemingly autobiographical work about the artist in which her photographic memory leads her to become too consumed with the visual world and withdraws from family and society. The projection is screened within a reconstruction of the inventor Thomas Edison's famous Black Maria, purportedly the world's first movie studio.
