Canadian artist DEBBY FRIDAY has unveiled the official video for her latest single ‘WHAT A MAN’. The track is taken from her debut LP GOOD LUCK, which is currently out now on Sub Pop.

Directed by DEBBY FRIDAY herself, along with Kevan Funk, the concept finds its inspiration in the John Berger essay Ways of Seeing. Dissecting the male gaze and transforming what she feels as personal pain into empowerment, DEBBY FRIDAY plays the role of a stripper on stage entertaining an onlooker, whilst other scenes feature the same guy in a submissive position, all the way down to being sacrificed.

Touching on the video, DEBBY FRIDAY mentioned:

“‘The ‘WHAT A MAN’ music video is loosely based on the famous essay, Ways of Seeing, by English art critic John Berger as well as paintings by the Italian Baroque painter, Artemisia Gentileschi (in particular, her iconic work Judith Slaying Holofernes).

In 1972, Berger released Ways of Seeing as both a television series via the BBC and a book. Both the series and the text function as image-based explorations of the depiction of women in Western art and culture. This work has been massively influential in cultural theory, as it introduced the concept of “the male gaze”.

Gentileschi is distinctive for being one of the only female professional artists of her era. Her paintings draw from myths and Biblical stories and almost always feature women as protagonists and equals to men. Arguably her most famous work, Judith Slaying Holofernes, is thought to be a self-portrait that depicts her as Judith slaying a Holofernes who resembles Agostino Tassi, a man who raped her when she was 17.

Both the essay and the paintings served as frameworks for the video. The same way that Gentileschi painted herself into images of other women is the same way I feel that every woman can see ourselves in much of Gentileschi’s story and her work. To be a woman and an artist in this world is to be, in a way, a shapeshifter. You take on the shape of whatever and whoever is looking at you – whether that be a camera, a phone, a lover, a thief, a killer. Always and all at once, you are a spectacle, a flower, a treasure, a ditch, a bitch, a miracle.