The #ArtyProject: Update 2

I cannot believe that it has been two weeks already since my last #ArtyProject post!

It’s crazy how quickly time flies. Anyways, let’s get cracking on our second update – yay! 🙂 So I started off my creating another collage and then followed up with a mind map. The collage looks at the application of makeup – as we use makeup as a way of ‘beautifying’ ourselves I thought this was a cool little collage to do for fun and to help me come up with some more ideas.

I soon remembered back to my A-Level Art project that I picked vanity as a subject and did a lot of work with photos of myself in portrait form and combining it with magazine cuttings to create a mixed media collage. I looked on my beloved Pinterest and went searching for similar work. I typed in Art Beauty Collages or something along those lines and found so many pieces that fit in perfectly with what I am doing but these artists’ work are most similar to what I’m doing; Gabi Trinkaus and photographers Metra Bruno and Laurence Jeanson. 

I have written that this my mixed media piece is an interpretation of Trinkaus’ work however when I did this collage, I hadn’t yet found that image so it’s very strange that both pieces look so similar! I was actually trying to re-create that self-portrait collage that I did in collage using the same technique. I then started looking at natural faces vs plastic faces – loads of people have surgical procedures on their face to make them look more ‘beautiful’. The two photographers, Bruno and Jeanson explored how people would look like with plastic surgery using tape and magazine cutouts like myself. 🙂

My response to this was by doing a sketch of my face – this time from observation by looking in the mirror instead of using a photograph. I played around with various magazine cuttings and snipped out facial features that I saw as ‘beautiful’ such as narrow noses, bigger and wider eyes, and fuller lips. Apart from the full lips, this is what most Asian women would deem as being beautiful – especially the wider eyes and narrow nose. I’m quite fortunate to have a small nose but deeply remember my mother criticising my Asian friend’s nose as it was “too low and ugly”. Not cool. However, most Asian cultures are brainwashed into believing that if you want to be beautiful, you need to look like the westerners.

There’s a piece by Esther Honig that shows how an untouched photograph of a young girl would look like when it is retouched by different countries to depict that country’s view on beauty. I’ve extracted a few of the photos and put them side-by-side below so you can see exactly what each country has done to the photo and you can really see a significant difference between all of them. Indonesia was the only “Asian” country they had on there but as you can see, the perception of Asian beauty is exactly what I had thought; lighter skin and brighter wider eyes.

All the stuff I found out was very interesting as I didn’t know other countries tweaked their images to portray their vision of beauty like the Asians do. I now want to move away from just makeup and explore aesthetics and cosmetic surgery a bit more.

Most Asian women that I know (i.e. my mother and her friends) have ALL been under the knife for something. Whether it’s for a boob job, nose job or facial reconstruction – they’ve done it. All to be more youthful, more beautiful. What does this say to their daughters or grand-daughters? I don’t really know. I personally have thought about work done but I am unsure whether I would actually go ahead with it (this is hypothetically speaking as I can’t afford it anyway). Although, botox is only a few hundred pounds per area and lip filler is about £300 so I could get those dreamy fuller lips and wrinkle-free if I saved up. I found another Pinterest image that I thought would be great for the next step in my project which I will look into more and explore Bruno and Jeanson’s work a little more. 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this project update and don’t forget to look out for it in about two weeks time. In the meantime, don’t forget to check out all of the other girls who are also taking part in this project and see what they’re getting up to…

ZOE | VICKY | MARYAM | ANNABEL | DANIELLE
MILLI | SARAH | ULI | CLARA | EMMA | JHO | CIARA

Thanks for reading!

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