Zoë MacPhail Prineas is a multi-disciplinary artist, DJ, designer and, according to her lively Instagram account, jester!? In the final week of her show Nothing Rhymes with Mirror at Sydney’s LAILA Gallery, we met to chat about art, horror films, being an identical twin, cyborgs, washing machines and cosmetic surgery.

Grace Sandles Hello! Can you tell me a bit about when you started in art and how you got to this point?

Zoë MacPhail Prineas Well, I’ve just completed my BFA at the National Art School. I majored in printmaking, but my practice has always had an undercurrent of drawing. I use drawing to think things through, but I've always been very interdisciplinary. I'm interested in objects in general, but also in their translation in two-dimensional forms. I'm also interested in the idea of taking a three-dimensional object and transforming it into something two-dimensional.

GS What about your interest in domestic technology?

ZMP That started in 2021. It was a very specific moment when I opened a dishwasher, stared into it and saw my own reflection in the back. I was just really taken aback. Although it sounds absurd, I was mesmerised by the way the light within this 90-degree, man-made box danced in such an organic, undulating manner. That contrast, and also catching my reflection, was such an uncanny experience.

I’ve always been curious about these ideas of identity and reflection, perception, and the uncanny. When the familiar becomes unfamiliar, that creates a sense of uncanny. That’s how it seems with my identical twin.

Over time, I have realised what it was about that experience that really struck me. I’m an identical twin, and I realised that the experience of catching your reflection in a place where you don't expect it is kind of what it feels like to be a twin. In a weird way, it’s the same sense of otherness. From that point, domestic technologies became a rich vehicle.

GS I didn’t know you were a twin.

ZMP Yes, we are actually part of the Twin Society, where we participate in scientific experiments because we're the perfect controlled variable. And so I think about that a lot with the competing forces of nature and nurture. And anytime my twin has a differing opinion to me, I wonder, where did you get that?

GS How did that happen?

ZMP Exactly! But also, who's the original, and who is the copy? I’m really into horror films at the moment, especially the ones that explore the trope of identical twins as doubles. There is something diabolical about doubles . I was reading this in a book recently and it reminded me of the doppelganger effect and The Shining twins in the hallway.

Zoë MacPhail Prineas, Facelift, 2024 heat transfer vinyl, elastane fabric, chains, tassels, 200 x 184.2 x 45 cm. Courtesy of LAILA Gallery

ZMP I'm someone who believes that our biology has already been influenced by the internet and these very common technologies that we use are kind of cyborg in nature.

GS That's one of my favourite ideas!  I’ve always thought maybe your phone isn't technically attached to you, but you are augmenting your natural human abilities with it, such as being able to communicate over vast distances or store and access knowledge that isn’t yours. Is that not the definition of being a cyborg?

ZMP Exactly. It's an extension of your body. Even in the way we process information, we can unlock the infinite knowledge of the universe instantly.

GS And then there are things like pacemakers and cochlear implants (my sister is deaf ). These are all medical technologies that literally augment your body's natural state.

ZMP It's also why AI doesn't really scare me. I've always seen it as a collaborative thing. And I still am very much a humanist, in that I do believe that there is something essential to the human condition that is pre-language and that we can't code. You know?

GS Yeah. Absolutely. Let’s circle back to that uncanny tension of the familiar made unfamiliar.

ZMP Growing up, my twin and I, especially up until the age of 17, looked exactly the same. We were joined at the hip, and we moved as a unit. And people just referred to us as “the twins.”

And then we went through this process of individuation, which is also super interesting, and untethering. She’s a neuroscientist now.  When she was working at the Brain and Mind Centre, her colleagues and community started to look different from mine. Often, I'd be walking down King Street and a guy on a bike would just start waving at me. I would have to message her and say, “King Street on a bike,” so she could try to figure out who it was and then contact them. If it was one of my friends, I could contact them and say, “Hey, by the way, I have an identical twin, and that's why I didn't wave at you.”

GS It’s fascinating that you both went into these different fields. Then again, creativity and science are very much two sides of the same coin.

ZMP Oh my gosh! A hundred percent! I think they both involve a kind of lateral thinking. Additionally, I believe that the ways in which the models of thinking in art and science differ only serve to exacerbate how drastically different our personalities are. In the future, I would be interested in doing some more collaborative work with her. We'll see how that works out.

Odalisque, 2024 acrylic and charcoal on canvas 610x 914 mm

suck bot, 2024 acrylic and charcoal on canvas 610 x 914 mm

From dust you come and from dust you shall return, 2024 acrylic and charcoal on canvas 610 x 914 mm

GS Can you tell me about your series at LAILA Gallery? Maybe let’s start with Tuba since it’s right there.

ZMP Even now, the work continues to unfold. Even as I was putting it up here, I started thinking of Great Gatsby, the eyes of God, and the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. That kind of created a new narrative for me.

I guess with these works as well, I was looking at industrial design and even commercial product photography, especially work that is mass produced. I was working a lot last year with actual machine parts, like found machine parts from washing machines and dishwashers. I started thinking about them as metaphors. And then the cyborg comes into play. Obviously, Donna Haraway was a major influence. And then I was thinking about that vacuum cleaner that's a circle.

GS A Roomba!

ZMP Yeah, exactly. I just feel like it's such an early robot. There's something so servant-mastery about it.

A teacher advised me to look at what Picasso did with the acoustic guitar. At the time, I didn’t like it but then I realised he's inferring the body and the presence of the body. I think it's playing with objectification in a more inverted way.

GS I think that also contextualises your various fascinations. Certainly, it contextualises this huge, more sculptural piece [looks at Facelift, 2024]. Can you tell me about this one?

ZMP So this one was fun to make because it was so intuitive and it just told me what to do with it. The imagery came from inside a dishwasher. I think I probably read a line from Karl Marx about commodity fetishism and obviously decided to put tassels in there.

I was also exploring this idea of pain and pleasure and what we subject ourselves to, especially around this idea of surgery. I was thinking about how, in history, surgery has been lifesaving but it has also evolved into cosmetic surgery, which is about enhancing something that's not broken. Technology now promises immortality.

There was this line, I don't know where it came from, but it said “keeping up appearances.” And this whole idea of embellishment and home decor coincided with my obsession with chrome in domestic technology. I was just thinking about all of that and how planned obsolescence evokes the planned obsolescence of human beings. I was thinking about how [it’s undesirable to show that] you've lived a life.

Installation view Zoë MacPhail Prineas, Nothing rhymes with Mirror, LAILA Gallery