Birthday Suit – with scars and defects (1974) is a thirteen-minute black and white video art tape by Canadian artist Lisa Steele.
It is her best known early work and depicts Steele "present[ing] her naked body to the unblinking gaze of the camera".
"[5] Birthday Suit – with scars and defects was selected by Toronto International Film Festival as an essential part of Canada's cultural legacy.
Her videos are in collections worldwide, including The National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Houston, Texas), Ingrid Oppenheim, Concordia University (Montreal), Newcastle Polytechnic (England), Paulo Cardazzo (Milan), the Canadian Embassy (Tokyo) and the Akademie der Kunst (Berlin).
With Scars and Defects – its seemingly rehearsed choreography, the chronological ordering of memory, and the unvarying repetition of gestures – unsettles the viewer’s spontaneous impression of an unedited sequence.
Such gaze alignment, which the fixed camera position epitomizes, opens up the scene toward a literally "exhibitionist" affirmation of self.
"[13] Like much of her work in the 1970s, Birthday Suit addresses the video medium as "a gendered tool of power [as a] means of surveillance and social control, or of confession and self-examination.
[17] Steele's approach to identity is both matter-of-fact but also fictionalized, employing irony and as an extension of conceptual art, practices of directness and banal bluntness.
[26] Online videos employ Steele's performance of body narrative, often emphasizing the unhealthy, scarred or marked.