Beauty Queen is an artistic series about women and their place in a main patriarchy society. I decided to represent some of the most iconic women in different eras of humanity. Living legends and still after their death but also the symbol of their own vulnerability. This art series is about women’s beauty standards throughout history. An aesthetic satire, a visual paradox. The goal is to question our time from a social and cultural point of view. Emphasize our relationship about identity & society. It’s a decapitated still-life photograph, well representative of a Memento-Mori suffocated. They are between glamorous heroines and victims straight out of a tragedy. These characters evolve in a saturated pop color set-up with a strong meaning revealing a much darker condition. History is an infinite inspiration. Beauty Queen highlights the social pressure at different times for the most iconic women, by the past until now. The story is always about a sacrifice of her own happiness.
NATURE VIVANTE 1 – Kylie Jenner – Digital Era – 2016. The dictatorship of women’s beauty : People want to raise Kylie Jenner as a living icon, no matter what people will think about her, indeed. But can we say that her multiple surgeries to get her beauty socially accepted in the elite’s world, will cause her own degradation ? At her early age, she suffers from multiple surgeries for being accepted and recognized in the actual tyranny of women's beauty standards and stereotypes. In a society, where womens insecurities are another way to capitalize. These women are oppressed and judged by that same society for their physical apparence during their whole life. This social pressure against women beauties, push her to make her feel ugly and to transform her child face and body to looks like the typical occidental beauty types. Followed by many young girls being influenced by the same insecurities and don't hesitate to put their life in danger to have access to the same beauty types.
NATURE MORTE 2 – Marilyn Monroe – Contemporary Times – 2016. The persecution of women’s life goals : Marilyn Monroe was a living legend, a model, actress and singer, literally a sex-symbol. She was feminist and powerful but depressed because of her loneliness, and the feeling that she had not succeeded in all her goals (unsuccessful marriages, no child and drugs issues). She was finally always perceived as a sexual object in a society where women are only useful for their role as a mother or housewife. However women's life goals aren't only to give birth. This is an important social pressure for a woman of her time and probably still ours…
NATURE MORTE 3 – Frida Kahlo – Contemporary Times – 2016. The appropriation of the female bodies in the art world : There's a disgusting paradox in women art world. Indeed, women have long been excluded from the art world, even banned for writing or painting and yet we observe in art over time an overconsumption, an overexposure even an obsession with the female body, generally constructed under the male gaze. Frida Kahlo then appears as a symbol, a legend, a precursor in the art world. She reappropriates her own body both physically than artistically. During her lifetime, she suffered from sexism in art, accident that paralyzes her, the betrayal, competition and jealousy from her painter husband also. Despite everything, her image and strength remains eternal but rare because women in art are still being ghosted from the art world.
NATURE MORTE 4 – Mulan – Middle Age – 2021. The control & domination of women's fate : The goal is to question our time about the social pressure in love or marriage still present now everywhere around the globe. Like the great Chinese warrior Mulan who tragically pushed herself to suicide after being forced to marry to the Chinese Emperor. A reminder that one has the right of freedom to love and marry their choice.
NATURE MORTE 5 – Jeanne D’Arc – Middle Age – 2020. Women’s undefeated power : Here the portrait of Jeanne D’arc, she ran an entire nation and helped the reconstruction of her own country after almost one century of war. She became a national hero during her lifetime; but after being burned alive like the witches during her time; she paradoxically became the personification of national unity. Her tragic fate makes some echo with our actual society.
NATURE MORTE 6 – Cleopatra – Classical Antiquity – 2016. The society's fear of a women as a leader of a nation : The sexism has always existed in the political environment since the beginning of democracy in Greece until today where certainly the right to vote for women was granted in France in 1944 ( very late) but where it's still very rare to see them in the access to the direct political power. And when some of them succeed it, they have to sacrifice their new power into a tragic end.
