The cosmetic products include a wide range of items. They are portable, convenient, and as seductive as the young ladies who use them. In The Second Sex (1953), Part One, Formative Years, Chapter I, Childhood, Simon de Beauvoir claims that “one is not born, but rather becomes, woman” (283). Cosmetic products highlight and accelerate that “becoming” transition.
My works, which deal with beauty and cosmetic products, draw upon the disequilibrium between the unattainable ideal of beauty created by the consuming society and people's body with flaws and aging. The performances of applying the makeup tools embody my self-contradictory attitudes towards makeup – eager to get beautiful through makeup versus disgust at catering to the mainstream beauty criteria.
The purpose of this body of work is exploring the body, as an object, and as a process with living meanings. The thesis work consists of cosmetic tools and videos. They break down the romanticism created by the beauty industry, and highlight the fruitless endeavor of makeup and the absurdity of modern life.
We can make up our face, our body, but we can never make up the ungraspable time. There is the anxiety of death behind the wallpaper of cosmetics.
化妆品的名目繁多。它们便于携带,方便使用,并且都像那些使用它们的女性们一样拥有吸引人的外表。在《第二性》(1953)第一部分,第一章中,西蒙娜·德·波伏娃写道,“女人并非生来就是女人,而是变成女人。”化妆品从一定程度上强调并且加速了这个“变成”的转变。
我的作品是关于女性的美貌和化妆品的使用。这些作品,讨论了消费社会创造的不可企及的理想化的女性美貌与真实的不完美的身体之间的巨大落差。我的作品包括再造的化妆品(实物)和使用这些化妆品的行为(视频)。通过使用这些化妆品,表达我对化妆这一行为的矛盾态度。一方面我希望通过化妆变美,另一方面我耻于迎合主流的审美标准。
研究目的旨在探索人的身体,物化的人的肉身,以及携带着生存意义的活着的过程。我的作品包括化妆的工具和记录化妆的视频。它们粉碎了由化妆工业制造的浪漫假象,强调了化妆的徒劳和现代生活的荒谬。
我们可以暂时掩盖脸上的瑕疵,但是无法掩盖青春流逝和生命消亡的事实。撕开这层化妆的墙纸,藏在背后的是对于死亡的焦虑。