9th Annual International Conference on. Visual and Performing Arts

Athens, Greece| June 11-14, 2018

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Quest for Perfection: Destructive Beauty

The Destructive Beauty series explores the dark aspect of everyday life’s issues addressing social and cultural matters. Ideal images of beauty created by public media affect people from every walk of life. People are told what “attractiveness” is and what it is not. Many devote excessive energy, time, and money to perfect themselves. Some take the dissatisfaction about their flaw appearance to the extreme. In response to these issues, the series depicts the profound obsession, consciousness, and attempt of being perfect in our society.

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The series consists of three images portraying the obsessions about plastic surgery, body dysmorphic disorder, and anorexia. These issues are conveyed by using tattooed ball-jointed dolls as a metaphor. In the Obsessions of Plastic Surgery, the doll is stitching herself in commonly modified places. The overlaid embroidered octopuses and stitches accentuate the impression of plastic surgery. The Body Dysmorphic Disorder addresses the issue by creating the scene in which the doll is studying herself in the mirror. The faces in the pictures around her are scratched off. The overlaid illustrations of cone of vision and narcissus flowers suggest the effect of self- absorption. Anorexia delineates the terror of the disorder by sealing the doll’s lips with stitches. Surrounded by food, the superimposed claw-like eels from her mouth struggle to reach out for food and try to subside the hunger simultaneously.

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The images are created digitally from manual sketches in 3D visualization software, 3DS Max and Mudbox, where the objects and scenes are created. Printing finished images on canvas adds the warmth of traditional painting to the work. The gallery installation becomes more dynamic using video projection of dancer silhouettes on the images. The juxtaposition between the graceful dance moves and the images serve as a link to communicate the dichotomy between beauty and destruction. 

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Keyword: Art and Society, Digital Rendering on Canvas, Video Projection