Exploited # 2

My job is to ignite conversation about changing perceptions of beauty - from once offering experiences of pleasure to now birthing havoc, akin to the cruelest drug. I’m beginning this work by exploring fashion. As beauty’s commander-in-chief, fashion operates shamelessly, appealing to vanity, employing hypocritical, provocative, and vapid statements in a camouflaged pursuit, and rapacious appetite, for profits. It identifies, and pursues, vulnerable women and children as prey, manipulating them to behave as if constantly on stage, demonstrating who they want to be, are expected to be, or others believe them to be - distinctive clothing and accessories being de rigueur. Clear warning signs of lurking treachery exist, e.g. glamorized child models and anorexic, aging and despairing adult models. Instead of denying, excusing, or ignoring those signs my art exaggerates them, challenging the appalling emphasis on physical beauty via fashion, demonstrating how that emphasis encourages false perceptions of identity, an obsession with appearance as the sine qua non of identity, and even defines our value as human beings.