Preview
Creation Date
2012
Description
Materials: Inkjet Print
Dimensions: 20''x16''
Project Advisor: John Shimon and Julie Lindemann
Year of Graduation: 2012
Medium
Photography
Rights
Copyright for this work is held by the artist.
COinS
Artist Statement
The human body and homoeroticism are the forces that motivate me to create my photographs. I aim to blend fashion and corporeal revelations. I am interested in beauty, narcissism, sexuality, and the visualization of desire. I perpetuate the ephemeral and fragile look of the human figure and render our capricious desires and moods in everyday life. I do not mean to pursue timeless ideals, but to retain fleeting energy and ebbing beauty in an everlasting moment. Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Weber, and Pierre et Gilles are among my influences.
Notions of beauty have always been amorphous and capricious in the field of art. In Dave Hickey’s essay: Enter the Dragon: On the Vernacular of Beauty, Hickey did not define beauty, instead he insinuated that beauty is inherently powerful. Beauty gives viewers visual pleasure, thus on some level, it manipulates the viewers through its alluring power. The controversy incited by beauty ensues at the same time because of this quality. When Robert Mapplethorpe did his solo exhibition The Perfect Moment in 1989, media attention was brought to his work due to its provocative portrayals of the male sexuality. People always seem to get scared of things they are fascinated by. This is why I want to confront this fact and break the oppression down into pieces using my images.
My Quotidian Sexuality series contemplates the beauty of body from people’s perspective by putting the viewer into a hidden position able to scrutinize private moments of men and women. The subject is continually exposed in a panoptic environment. Barbie and Ken Dolls confronts the viewer with the concept of beauty using vivid complimentary colors inspired by paintings of Die Brucke group. Does It Offend You intentionally puts viewers in the psychological conflicts among voyeuristic pleasure, self-accusation of the pleasure, and the guilt from the urge to judge.
Funded in part by Mellon Senior Experience Grant.