SUSPENSION SCENE from Yaz’s Abduction film short accompanying the single of that title from Persephone, her second album. Leather Hobble Dress: Dark Garden; Rigging: Damon Pierce
Abduction film: Yaz battles against repression, censorship and theft
NOVEMBER COVER STORY: Since its release in April, Yaz’s Abduction film short, based on her experiences of being institutionalised at age 15, has had more than 250,000 YouTube views – an official mark of commercial success on the platform. But the LA-based musician, filmmaker and kinkster had not fully anticipated the amount of resistance she, as a female artist expressing herself through eroticism, would have to overcome to reach that point. Below, in her own words, she offers an insight into the battles she had to win – which included fighting someone attempting to steal ownership of the work from her. Top banner: Yaz (centre) in a scene from Abduction inspired by da Vinci’s The Last Supper
YAZ WRITES:
As an artist, I have always said that I must be willing to die for my work, both literally(!) and figuratively, to create anything that I feel is worthwhile.
Like a witch, I am willing to be burned at the metaphorical stake to make a statement and break down the doors of repression and censorship that subjugate, objectify, and imprison women in our society.
It is a radical act for a woman to reclaim her power and wield it — and one that is unfortunately met with unfathomable resistance along the way.
While I have always confronted this battle head-on throughout my career, little did I know the fight to the near-death against self-repression, systemic censorship, and artistic theft that I would face with creating and releasing my latest film Abduction.
EPISODE ONE: CONFRONTATION OF THE SELF
DISTURBING SCENE in Abduction representing Yaz’s incarceration in a psychiatric institution, aged 15
The first head of the Hydra I faced with creating Abduction was the battle within myself.
I have often said that I must live my work as an artist before I can create it. Far beyond the idea of life simply imitating art, each piece that I create is a reflection of the deepest parts of my soul.
Creating in this way is not easy. Each project demands that I excavate the darkest parts of my psyche and ultimately face myself as I crawl through the proverbial flames of self-actualisation to be reborn.
As a student of Hermeticism — the idea that God is a magician — I have always looked at this process as alchemical. Transmuting darkness and pain into light through creation.
I have never run from this process. I know it is necessary for my evolution and to serve my highest purpose in this world, despite how difficult it may be.
However, creating my Abduction film (subject of The Fetishistas’ April cover story) took this process to an unfathomable level. I spent nine agonising months wandering the desolate earth of my psyche as I withdrew from the external world and retreated into the chrysalis of self-transformation.
As my soul was stripped bare through the excavation of my shadow, the confrontation of the genealogies of pain I had held my entire life incarnated, forcing me to face the darkest parts of my past and my deepest wounds.
DARK GARDEN Underbust Corset, one of several DG styles worn by Yaz in her Abduction film
It was from this confrontation of self that my Abduction film was born, and the exorcism of the parts of my past that I thought would never see the light of day began.
Abduction is about my experience being illegally institutionalised by my mother when I was 15 years old. I was strapped down to a bed, drugged, and held hostage for nine days, as the 72-hour psychiatric hold I was initially placed under continued to be renewed despite no legal justification for doing so.
I was stripped of any semblance of autonomy and all of my rights. I was forced into a position of complete submission with threats of being drugged further and held longer should any lack of total compliance be perceived.
Unfortunately, this experience of abuse at the hands of my mother was not an isolated incident. When I was 11 years old, my mother had a psychotic break that she never came back from.
She suffered from a number of severe mental illnesses, many of which were not properly diagnosed until after her death, and consequently were never treated. From this point on she began severely physically, emotionally, psychologically, and medically abusing me.
In addition to this abuse, she controlled every aspect of my life and isolated me from the people around me. Her greatest desire was for me to be completely enmeshed with her, and she did everything in her power to make that a reality. Fortunately, she did not succeed.
ABDUCTION BTS SHOT: Yaz tries on vintage Dark Garden Leather Hobble Dress worn in the film
Before Abduction was released, I had never discussed what had happened to me with the majority of people in my personal life, let alone publicly. My mother died a saint in the eyes of those who knew her; who was I to shatter their memory with the reality of her true nature?
However, I knew that the only way to liberate myself from the shackles of my past was to bring to light the experiences I wanted more than anything to forget.
Abduction’s release into the world this past April marked a turning point in my life. No longer was I able to exist as the object of artifice I so meticulously created at the tender age of 11 years old.
I spent over a decade living encased in the bulletproof armour of ‘Yaz’, hiding Yazmeen Mirgoli and any semblance of her profound sensitivity, vulnerability, and emotionality behind steel-boned armour and a hyper-feminine veneer. A fragmented existence that I was forced to confront through the creation of the film.
It was through the vulnerability and authenticity of Abduction that I was finally able to return to wholeness.
However, little did I know that the war I felt I had faced in creating Abduction was only one battle in the crusade I was about to fight to release the film that is ultimately my liberation.
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