Story Of The Eye / Four Chambers

The Story of the Eye by Four Chambers returns to that raw territory, where the body is neither symbol nor spectacle, but material, impulse, and archive. Presented as a living environment, the project dismantles inherited ways of looking at imagery and repositions sexuality as a site of artistic research, authorship, and agency. Rather than aestheticising desire, Four Chambers exposes it as structure, gesture, and shared experience, asking what happens when the gaze is no longer passive, and the body is allowed to speak for itself.

Dipping our toes in taboo, witnessing the materialization of a moment in art history. The reconstruction of the meaning of true beauty lies in the actual visualization of our bodies in a primal state. It’s honest, it’s real.

Art can be real.

It has always been there, within us, a kindling fire that spreads through our system. Widely misunderstood: Our sexuality is often the source of inspiration for many, the body being its own muse, pulling impulse from within, expressing itself, working itself. Since 2013, Four Chambers, a collective led by Vex Ashley, has pioneered new forms of artistic and performative expression derived from sexuality, pornography, and erotic culture, challenging the viewer’s gaze and traditional frameworks of appreciation.

This autonomous organization, based in London, has been responsible for developing and producing experimental films and performances intended to challenge society’s views on pornographic and erotic material from a more elevated perspective. Most recently, during the Dirty Weekend takeover at the Barbican Centre, Four Chambers has showcased “The Story of the Eye”, a multidisciplinary encounter in the form of a living archive. It’s less traditional, more experimental, and an experience in which the audience can interact with a production featuring feminist, queer, and avant-garde erotic imaginaries.

This showcase in itself also featured a head-turner of an interactive installation, developed by Vex & Fopk, inspired by the film Echo Chamber (2025): a cubical structure covered in mirrors, designed to reflect one’s own body and the gaze of outsiders upon it. This space held live performances, bodies contorting and curling upon one another, with their own reflection as witness. Other performances featured were also held by Aimée Ruhinda and Ozziline Mercedes.

This event represented an opportunity for explicit multimedia to reach into the grounds of elegance and the world of avant-garde; it was raw and unmasked, vulnerable and provocative, although, and most importantly, not trashy, not sexualized, but sexual art, sexual research, and evaluation. In instances such as these, it is important to take a sophisticated approach, especially when translating themes as delicate, onto a wandering public, about other people’s bodies, while inviting them to also explore the limits on their own bodies and sexuality, giving them the opportunity to become art, or rather, discover the art within them.