Votive Figure and Afterbeauty by Polish photographer Marta Zgierska are two short series of images around the idea of beauty currently on view at Galerie Intervalle in Paris.
The artist is fascinated by cosmetic surgery and undermines the canons of beauty. She denounces the social pressure exerted by this new religion that has become the appearance and defies the expectations about female image.
“I would like to pose a question on the nature of beauty in the contemporary world” Marta says about the works. “Today the cult of beauty, in a paradoxical twist, spreads best through virtual reality, gaining millions of followers in the process. These works deal with the same issues in different ways: my goal is to undermine the current beauty canons and the social pressure they create, as well as expectations on the female body image.”
"Subsequent works are all built around the repeated gesture of covering my body in wax. At the same time, I refer to the tradition of religious ex-voto: make a symbolic sacrifice in order to become beautiful. A votive figure is an offering placed within places of worship to vow, gain favour or give thanks. It often takes the form of modeled reproduction of ill body part or organ, which reffers to a particular issue – failing eyesight, fertility, arthritic limbs.*
Created figures are not made only from the wax. My body stays inside a wax shell and I myself become a votive figure. The color on the wax is not outer decorative in itself, it is driven by the beauty products used to decorate the body. The trace of lipstick, shining through the waxen layer, marks the point of contact between the living body and the shell.
The cult of the real body, in a paradoxical twist, spreads best through virtual reality, gaining millions of followers in the process. For many, the depiction of appealing, desirable body becomes the only pursuit, a way of life, a stepping stone to a life of fame and fortune. The body and its beauty have become commodities that can be monetized to an unprecedented extent.
In order to respond to this reality, I use an aesthetic derived from a visual code characteristic of the modern cosmetics industry. The initial works focus on a detailed study of the wax-covered body. Everything seems soft, rounded, pleasant, wax reminds one of sugar frosting. Meanwhile the process itself is neither pleasant nor pretty. It has little to do with the surface of the image. Wax burns, gets into your nose, makes your lashes fall out and makes your hair stick together.
In my latest works I take this wax figure, this victim, into perfect spaces – retro-futuristic interiors or microworlds enveloped in pink plush upholstery, with beautiful mirrors and curtains, representations of our aspirational lifestyle, all colourful and fancy. And yet absolute alienation and loneliness ensues. The anxiety comes in crevices, cracks, scars.
* As an organic medium wax has the unique ability to simulate the look, touch, and feel of human flesh. From earliest times, artists and artisans have used these qualities to create realistic reproductions of the human body as objects for devotion, memorial, scientific research, and entertainment. By the Middle Ages Christian symbolism and the production of votive images that supported the rituals of the Christian church became so common that it created an industry. The human figures, limbs, and organs that hang in modern Catholic churches and in other sacred places, are proof that people have always applied their personal relationships to divinity to their own fragile bodies." — Marta Zgierska
