Artist: Gillian Wearing (British, born 1963)

Title: Video Still (Homage to the Woman with the Bandaged Face)

Date: 1995‒96

Medium: Reversal film dye coupler print

Dimensions: 16 3/4 in x 23 1/4 in

Credit: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of Peter Norton, 2016.4.60.

Imagine walking down the street and brushing past myriad faces—an experience typical of urban life—and suddenly running into a woman whose face is fully covered with bandages. Does it fix your gaze, or do you intentionally look away? Video Still (Homage to the Woman with the Bandaged Face) proposes these questions to the viewer.

Made by Gillian Wearing, a member of the group active that became known as Young British Artists (YBA) in the 1990s, the photograph evokes an unsettling experience of looking that estranges the familiar: on the right of the image stands a woman in a wig with long, dark hair and bangs, her face fully covered by bandages. The bandages have three cuts where the eyes and mouth should be, but instead of exposing the facial features, the incisions only reveal empty shadows that resist identification. Facing the camera, the arc-shaped cuts form an expression like a smile. The composition positions the viewer to confront the figure directly as if running into her on the street. As the work blurs the line between art and reality, it implicates the viewer through the act of looking, questioning the boundary between the one who looks and the one who is looked at.

This photograph is from Wearing’s video work Homage to the Woman with the Bandaged Face Who I Saw Yesterday Down Walworth Road (1995), which produced a provocative narrative through the flickering lens of a video camera. In the first half, Wearing recalled her chance encounter with a woman with a bandaged face on a specific street in London. Paying homage to this anonymous person, on a Saturday a few weeks later, the artist put herself in a bandage mask and recorded the reactions of passers-by to her unconventional appearance.

An early work in her career, the video still reflects Wearing’s fascination with masks. While she had previously made video works in which masks were given to participants, this was the first work in which Wearing herself appears masked, inaugurating a long experimentation with this practice. Engaging with the peculiarities of ordinary people, social relations, and the construction of identity, the mask not only conceals one’s identity, but also operates as both a protective and liberatory device that opens up the possibilities of self-presentation and spontaneous authenticity. The unease of confronting the bandaged woman stems from the impossibility of seeing the face beneath, inviting speculation, particularly given the associations of bandages with bodily injury and medical care. The bandaged surface, described by Wearing as “a sheer brilliant white,” is distinct from human skin, provoking the spectator to search for the identity concealed beneath. However, the bandages form an opaque surface that simultaneously refuses to resolve any speculation. Like a blank canvas, the bandaged mask does not indicate a fixed identity and may prompt the spectator to become conscious of their own projection onto it.

Facing the camera with her back to the crowd, her presence strikes a note of confrontation. The fuzzy quality of the image creates a sense of documentary spontaneity, while simultaneously obscuring the expressions of the passers-by. They appear uncertain, indifferent, horrified, or perhaps careful not to show their notice of her presence: a woman turns her head to speak to a young boy, whose slightly furrowed brow suggests he has caught sight of the bandaged figure. Another woman is captured in profile, as if she is checking her reflection in a shop window or glancing back. Their muted, ambiguous reactions render the bandaged woman simultaneously conspicuous and invisible, as though someone who cannot be identified is quietly dismissed through collective disregard. As Wearing explores how people react to those who deviate from social norms, a question that runs throughout the artist’s practice, the audience is subjected to that same scrutiny here. Confronted with her bandaged face, our implicated reaction becomes the subject. Whatever that may be, it is a gaze that we cannot undo.

Contributed by Muyang Chen, 2025–26 Curatorial Intern

Bibliography

Russell Ferguson, “Show Your Emotions,” in Gillian Wearing (New York: Phaidon Press, 1999), 32-71

Doris Krystof, “Call Gillian: Masks, Identity, and Performativity,” in Gilian Wearing (London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2012), 9-20.