Meredith Leich

The two channel-video installation The Victorian and the Whale explores the relationship between the 19th century whaling industry and the colonial New England women who remained behind. The brutal world of whaling belonged mostly to men — indeed, only three female characters are mentioned in all of Moby Dick — but it was women who lived amidst the processed bodies of whales. Women bound their torsos with whale bone corsets, lit lamps with whale oil, spun and wound wool on whale bone swifts. The Victorian and the Whale presents the opposing ends of whaling: the undisturbed whale and its domestic use by a solo woman preparing her body for bed. Housed within a “ribcage” of hanging wooden beams and sail cloth, the paired videos juxtapose live action and 3D animation, bringing physically unreachable dimensions — the past and the depths of the ocean — into intimate proximity. The viewer enters a space of quiet voyeurism, joining a dialogue between women and whale, with the implied absence of the hunter and husband.