About Sophie

Sophie Swoffer is a performance artist that makes her own solo, feminist performance art. Sophie’s practice is interdisciplinary and draws on both Performance and Film Studies in order to re-envisage the male gaze in a post #metoo context. In previous works, Sophie has explored specific derided female film archetypes such as the young, apparently naïve and exploitable Hollywood ‘starlet’ and the ageing ‘diva’ actress.

 

Through powerful and provocative performance, Sophie investigates the potential of alternative and monstrous femininity that resists heteronormativity and deconstructs women’s relationship to the masculinised gaze. Sophie is particularly interested in creating feminist intermedial environments and uses projection and multiplied image to layer mediatised versions of the self and to create spaces that are characterised by the excess of the feminine image. She also makes and edits her own film pieces.

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Sophie is also a full time lecturer in performance at Sheffield Hallam University and has taught on many areas including, intermedial performance, acting and performing for screen,  live art, media in performance and historical performance theory.

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Sophie has guest edited The International Journal of Creative Media Research’s special edition of Exploring Creative Methodologies (June 2020) and has also published to the international Body, Space, Technology journal (2021) and Makings journal (2022). Sophie's recent article on her performance It's Sophie! is about to be published to the Studies in Theatre and Performance Journal. She was also awarded with the 2023 ADH Faculty Doctoral Research Prize from De Montfort University.