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Critical Annotation

In the third semester, I will further expand on the theme of traumatic memory explored in the second semester. Focusing on the traces of my own body as a point of interest, I aim to transform intangible trauma into tangible entities and construct a universal narrative of repair through dialogue with material substances. My project will be supported by five theoretical and methodological categories, forming a visual bridge between personal pain and collective healing.

Category 1: Materialization of Trauma and Spatial Restoration Keywords: material transformation, collective memory, spatial narrative. This section explores how intangible trauma can be transformed into tactile, perceivable entities, and how spatial narratives can embody repair. For example, Anish Kapoor’s My Red Homeland (1) employs the perpetual motion of wax to ritualize the transformation of personal memory and historical trauma into a material presence. The work allows viewers to experience the dialectic between trauma and healing through visual and tactile dimensions.

Category 2: The Healing Potential of Fragile Materials Keywords: organic materials, transformation process, protectiveness, sensory healing. This aspect investigates how fragile materials possess inherent powers of repair and transformation, elevating trauma through their material processes. A key reference is No Title (2) by American sculptor Eva Hesse, whose latex-drenched rope nets hang precariously between wall and floor, forming a vulnerable yet resilient structure. This paradox embodies the essence of my project: true healing does not erase contradiction but embraces it.

Category 3: The Corporeal Reconstruction of the Archive Keywords: personal archive, collective memory, materiality, identity. Drawing on Christian Boltanski’s Reserve of Dead Swiss (3), this section examines how anonymous materials can carry collective memory and emotional resonance. Boltanski transforms nameless garments into tangible traces of life — a method that parallels my transformation of online body fragments into symbolic carriers of cultural memory. His approach to the archaeology of memory informs my methodology for building a universal narrative that bridges individual and collective experience.

Category 4: The Aesthetic Politics of Repair Keywords: process, visible mending, transformation of value.

Repair itself becomes an aesthetic and political act. El Anatsui’s (4) overall artistic style is characterized by a strong sense of material transformation. He uses soft, textile-like weaving techniques to manipulate rigid industrial waste, creating a striking material contradiction that fundamentally alters the function and meaning of the substances themselves. Through this act of repair and reassembly, the artist seeks to connect the grand narratives of history, environment, and consumer culture.

Category 5: Multisensory Awakening of Tactile Memory Keywords: tactility, embodiment, sensory resonance, material dialogue. This section explores how multisensory engagement can reactivate bodily memory and the process of repair. In Chiharu Shiota’s The Key in the Hand (5), red threads weave together thousands of keys as vessels of personal history, forming a dense network that embodies both emotional entanglement and aesthetic order. By transforming everyday objects into a collective memory site, Shiota’s work provides a crucial reference for my own fragmented reconstruction — reminding us that in an era of fragmentation, reassembly is an act of reconnection.

(1) Lempesis, Dimitris. “ART-PRESENTATION: Anish Kapoor-My Red Homeland – Dreamideamachine ART VIEW.” Dreamideamachine.com, 2015. https://www.dreamideamachine.com/?p=6295.

(2) Whitney Museum of American Art. “No Title.” whitney.org, n.d. https://whitney.org/collection/works/5551.

(3) Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts. “Réserve Des Suisses Morts (Reserve of Dead Swiss),” n.d. https://www.mcba.ch/en/collection/reserve-des-suisses-morts-reserve-of-dead-swiss/.

(4) Royalacademy.org.uk. “El Anatsui | Artist | Royal Academy of Arts,” 2010. https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/el-anatsui-hon-ra.

(5) Shiota, Chiharu. “CHIHARU SHIOTA–塩田千春.” CHIHARU SHIOTA, 2015. https://www.chiharu-shiota.com/the-key-in-the-hand-1.

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Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor, My Red Homeland 2003 Wax and oil-based paint, hydraulic motor, steel block 12m in diameter Installation view.

Anish Kapoor, through the continuous motion of 25 tons of red wax, transforms personal pain into a ritualized material landscape. This idea deeply resonates with my project Broken and Flowing, which also seeks to materialize invisible trauma through the physical behavior of materials. In Kapoor’s work, the endless circular movement of the red wax—driven by mechanical force—embodies the notion that trauma is not a static inheritance, but a dynamic and evolving process. Similarly, in my practice, the fluidity of watercolor and the recomposition of fragmented limbs reflect the ongoing transformation of pain and memory.

For me, red symbolizes both life and vitality as well as violence and wounding. In my collages, I use red threads to suggest the suturing of trauma, making visible the tension between rupture and repair. Kapoor’s repetitive gestures and monumental installations create a ceremonial sense of healing in space, while my own repetitive acts of cutting and reassembling become a meditative process—one that explores the many ways trauma can be repaired, redefined, and ultimately reconciled.

Artsy.net. “Anish Kapoor | My Red Homeland (2003) | Artsy,” 2016. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/anish-kapoor-my-red-homeland.

Lempesis, Dimitris. “ART-PRESENTATION: Anish Kapoor-My Red Homeland – Dreamideamachine ART VIEW.” Dreamideamachine.com, 2015. https://www.dreamideamachine.com/?p=6295.

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Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread, House, at 193 Grove Road, London E3, 1993.

In House, Rachel Whiteread cast the interior void of a building in concrete, capturing its negative space and transforming absence into a solid, monumental presence. By giving form to the invisible, she endowed emptiness with material weight and commemorative significance. The work’s surface preserves subtle traces of domestic life—textures of walls, imprints of furniture, and the residue of human touch—allowing the material to speak of presence through absence. In doing so, Whiteread created an enduring surrogate, one that occupies the site of what once was, resisting erasure and forgetting through permanence. This gesture embodies a symbolic form of repair—an acknowledgment that while trauma cannot be reversed, it can be transformed into a lasting material memory.

Similarly, I approach my own practice as a form of archaeology of memory. Through collecting fragmented images of the body, painting and layering watercolor textures to simulate scars and traces, I excavate the psychological and physical residues of lived experience. Like Whiteread, I seek to translate personal histories into collective resonance, transforming private wounds into shared meditations on absence, remembrance, and resilience.

Cohen, Alina. “Rachel Whiteread’s ‘House’ Was Unlivable, Controversial, and Unforgettable.” Artsy, September 24, 2018. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-rachel-whitereads-house-unlivable-controversial-unforgettable.

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Chen Zhen

Chen Zhen, Jue Chang, Dancing Body - Drumming Mind (The Last Song), 2000.

Jue Chang, Dancing Body is an installation by French-Chinese artist Chen Zhen, which fuses Eastern and Western cultural symbols into a single poetic form. The artist ingeniously combines a Western hospital bed with a traditional Chinese Peking Opera chair. The hospital bed represents modern medicine’s intervention in life, while the opera chair embodies the spiritual essence of traditional Eastern art. These two seemingly opposing objects engage in a dialogue that evokes reflections on life and death, tradition and modernity, East and West.

The ornate craftsmanship of the chair contrasts sharply with the cold functionalism of the hospital bed, yet under Chen’s vision, they achieve a subtle harmony. Her work demonstrates how deeply personal experiences of trauma can be transformed into a universal visual language through the creative use of cultural symbolism. By merging individual life experiences with cultural metaphors, Chen constructs artworks that are at once highly personal and profoundly cross-cultural, inviting viewers to contemplate shared human conditions beyond cultural boundaries.

Archive, Asia Art. “Jue Chang - Fifty Strokes to Each.” Aaa.org.hk. Asia Art Archive, 2017. https://aaa.org.hk/en/collections/search/archive/fei-dawei-archive-chen-zhen/object/jue-chang-fifty-strokes-to-each.

Pirelli HangarBicocca. “Chen Zhen – Short-Circuits | Pirelli HangarBicocca.” Pirelli HangarBicocca, January 25, 2021. https://pirellihangarbicocca.org/en/exhibition/chen-zhen/.

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Peter Callesen, Human ruin, 2008, Acid free 120 gsm paper and glue, 256 x 144 x 25 cm.

In Human Ruin, Peter Callesen uses a single sheet of A4 paper—the most ordinary and fragile of materials—to create a figure struggling to rise from the ruins of the paper itself through precise cutting and folding. He demonstrates that fragility can hold immense expressive power. The delicate, ephemeral nature of paper becomes a perfect metaphor for the vulnerability and transience of human existence. A sheet once destined for disposal is transformed by the artist’s creative hand into a monument of tragic beauty and philosophical reflection. Callesen carefully arranges the cut-out fragments around the hollowed silhouette, allowing the removed negative space and the remaining form to together tell a complete story of loss and remembrance. This directly resonates with the voids and gaps of memory in my own work, reminding me that absence can be made visible and tangible through the shape it leaves behind. His practice reveals that true strength lies not in concealing fragility but, rather, in showing—through the most meticulous craft and gentle touch—how vulnerability can become a foundation for resilience, and how fragments can form the most complete narrative.

CALLESEN, PETER. “PETER CALLESEN.” PETER CALLESEN , 2019. https://www.petercallesen.com/human-ruin.

Colossal. “In States of Ruin, Architectural Sculptures by Peter Callesen Spring from a Single Sheet of Paper,” November 24, 2021. https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/11/peter-callesen-sculptures/.

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Anicka Yi

Anicka Yi in

Art21 is the world’s leading source to learn directly from the artists of our time. The mission of Art21 is to educate and expand access to

Anicka Yi in “Bodies of Knowledge”, Art in the Twenty-First Century Season 11, June 23, 2023.

Bodies of Knowledge is a complex, multisensory installation in which Anicka Yi uses bacteria and scent to construct an ever-evolving environment. The work explores non-human forms of intelligence and communication based on chemistry and microbiology. Yi precisely captures and harnesses the fragility of these materials, transforming it into a powerful potential for healing and perception. She demonstrates that the most fragile substances can contain the oldest and most resilient forms of life. This inspires my own exploration of delicate materials such as watercolor and paper, which I see as interconnected with ecological thinking. My work is not merely a reconstructed body but a micro-ecological site of body and mind, where cycles of light and time, traces of water, and material aging together form a dynamic, self-repairing field of life.

Art21. “Anicka Yi In,” n.d. https://art21.org/watch/art-in-the-twenty-first-century/s11/anicka-yi-in-bodies-of-knowledge/.

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Tacita Dean

Tacita Dean, FILM 2011. Installation view, Tate modern, London, 2012.

Unlike artists who work with pre-existing historical archives, Tacita Dean chooses to treat film itself—an analogue medium on the verge of extinction in the digital age—as her archival subject. Her attention is directed toward the physical materiality, chemical properties, and distinctive visual aesthetics of film. In FILM, through monumental projection, she magnifies the grain, color shifts, and scratches of the medium, as if erecting a monument to celluloid itself. Dean demonstrates that scratches are not flaws, and splice marks are not mistakes, but rather honest traces of the creative process. This deeply resonates with my own practice, encouraging me to preserve imperfections within my work. Like Dean, I aim to reveal and amplify the physical essence of my chosen medium, allowing its inherent characteristics to become central to the narrative.

Dean constructs an immersive, ritualistic spatial experience through light, shadow, and sound—an environment that invites the audience to step closer and participate in a collective act of media archaeology. Similarly, my works are not confined to static wall displays. Dean’s approach has inspired me to consider how to create a site of memory archaeology—perhaps through the use of light and projection—to guide viewers to engage with their whole bodies, sensing the tension of fragmentation and reassembly, and transforming the act of viewing into one of embodied experience.

ACCA. “Tacita Dean:FILM,” n.d. https://acca.melbourne/exhibition/tacita-dean-film/.

Tate. “The Unilever Series: Tacita Dean: FILM.” Tate, n.d. https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/unilever-series-tacita-dean-film.

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Wangechi Mutu

Wangechi Mutu, Yo Mama, 2003, Ink, mica flakes, acrylic, pressure-sensitive film, cut- and-pasted printed paper, and painted paper on paper, 59 1/8 x 85" (150.2 x 215.9 cm)

Yo Mama is a large-scale collage by Wangechi Mutu, composed of image fragments cut from fashion magazines, pornographic publications, medical anatomy books, and catalogs of traditional African art. These fragments—limbs, jewelry, mechanical components, and botanical motifs—are intricately layered within the contour of a female body using acrylic paint and glitter. Through this process, Mutu constructs a visual archive that interrogates the representation of the female body under the regimes of the gaze, as well as the African body within the colonial imagination.

By reassembling bodily fragments from divergent visual and cultural sources, Mutu creates hybrid, animated female figures that seem to reclaim agency from the images that once objectified them. The act of collage becomes an awakening—a transformation of cold, static imagery into a body that breathes, resists, and speaks.

In this sense, we all perform the role of visual archaeologists, cutting, editing, and reconfiguring fragments to dismantle inherited narratives of the body and to construct new ones. Our practices reveal that the body is never merely a biological form, but rather a surface upon which power, history, and personal experience are inscribed.

The bodies Mutu constructs are simultaneously grotesque and divine, challenging conventional notions of beauty and normality. Her work has inspired me to confront and reconstruct the grotesque dimensions within the body more courageously. Here, the grotesque does not signify defect or distortion; rather, it becomes a gesture of liberation—an assertion of vitality and resilience against the structures that seek to contain it.

Tylcz, Dominika. “Wangechi Mutu | MoMA.” The Museum of Modern Art. MoMA, 2020. https://www.moma.org/artists/28097-wangechi-mutu.

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Michelangelo Pistoletto

Michelangelo Pistoletto, Venus of the Rags, Polyurethane, polyester reinforced with fibre glass, textile, 253 × 200 × 100 cm.

Michelangelo Pistoletto juxtaposes the Venus, a symbol of eternal beauty, with a pile of discarded rags, symbols of the transient and the useless. This is not a simple opposition, but a charged dialogue of repair and reconciliation. He mends our fractured perception of value, compelling us to question which holds greater relevance to our lives today—the timelessness of art or the immediacy of discarded consumption. The colorful rags, gathered from countless anonymous individuals, collectively form a social body. The work becomes a utopian model of social integration, suggesting that the ultimate goal of repair is not to restore an isolated, pristine perfection, but to embrace and integrate into a collective made of imperfection and abandonment. Venus of the Rags teaches me how isolated individuals might rejoin society, and how, within the cycles of consumption and waste, beauty and humanity can find new ground.

krollermuller.nl. “Venus of the Rags,” n.d. https://krollermuller.nl/en/michelangelo-pistoletto-venus-of-the-rags.

Tate. “‘Venus of the Rags’, Michelangelo Pistoletto, 1967, 1974 | Tate.” Tate, n.d. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/pistoletto-venus-of-the-rags-t12200.

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EI Anatsui

El Anatsui, Timespace, 2014, Aluminium and copper wire. 325 x 495 cm.

El Anatsui, Skylines, 2008, Aluminium and copper wire. 245 x 825 cm.

El Anatsui, AG and BA, 2014, Installation: aluminium, copper wire and nylon string. Dimensions variable.

El Anatsui’s works employ discarded materials such as bottle caps and tin can lids collected across Africa. Through cutting, folding, puncturing, and hand-connecting them with copper wire, he weaves these fragments into vast, shimmering metallic tapestries. His practice transforms remnants of colonial trade and consumer culture into objects that recall traditional African textiles while possessing striking aesthetic value. This directly resonates with my own process of transforming digital-era cultural fragments into visual symbols that carry universal emotion—an elevation from waste to preciousness, from trauma to beauty.

Anatsui’s works never take a fixed form; he reconfigures and drapes them differently in each space, creating ever-changing landscapes. This fluid, reassembling process parallels my cyclical method of creation. We both emphasize that true repair is not about achieving a state of perfection but about finding renewal and meaning within continuous transformation.

Royalacademy.org.uk. “El Anatsui | Artist | Royal Academy of Arts,” 2010. https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/el-anatsui-hon-ra.

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Lee Bul

Lee Bul, Cyborg W1, W2, W4, 1998; W6, 2001; installation view, ‘Human, 7 questions’, Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul, 2021.

Lee Bul is a contemporary Korean artist whose practice explores the body, technology, utopia, and its inevitable ruins. Her Cyborg series consists of suspended hybrid sculptures made from silicone, resin, and fiberglass, presenting a strange yet captivating beauty. These forms feature partially feminized body curves awkwardly fused with mechanical parts, cold armor, or other non-organic structures. Their surfaces appear flawless yet fragile, evoking both perfection and vulnerability.

Both in her work and mine, the act of repair does not aim to restore an original body but to actively create a new, post-human form that transcends nature. Through her contradictory body sculptures, Lee Bul critically reconstructs mainstream notions of the body, dismantling utopian fantasies of technological perfection. The visible seams between materials in her work highlight the aesthetic and political value of repair—they testify to the body’s history, its constructed nature, and its ongoing transformation.

Frieze.com. “Fractured Utopias: Inside the World of Lee Bul,” October 14, 2025. https://www.frieze.com/article/andy-st-louis-lee-bul-253.

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Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson, Stereo Styles, 1988 instant film pictures placed on engraved plastic

Stereo Styles is one of Simpson’s most iconic studies combining language and imagery. By repeating images of Black women from behind alongside contradictory text, it powerfully examines identity stereotyping, individual anonymity, and inner contradictions. The artist deliberately erases facial features, transforming the figures into types rather than specific individuals, critiquing society’s disregard for Black women’s individuality. Similarly to my project, she uses the backs of figures to remove personal traits, aligning closely with my approach of stripping gender and racial markers from body images. Our shared aim is to move beyond specific individuals and explore more universal states of existence. A line of text is often placed at the center of the photographs, typically consisting of stereotypical, contradictory adjectives used to describe women, particularly Black women’s hairstyles and personalities. Simpson uses text to infuse multiple narratives into otherwise silent images, providing a multidimensional reference for deepening the narrative layers of my body collages.

Simon, Joan. “Lorna Simpson: Retrospective.” FEP, n.d. https://www.fep-photo.org/exhibitions/lorna-simpson-retrospective/.

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Chiharu Shiota

Chiharu Shiota, the key in the hand, 2015, old key, Venician boat, red wool

The Key in the Hand is a deeply moving, multisensory installation by Chiharu Shiota. The artist collected nearly 50,000 old keys from around the world and intertwined them with red yarn to form a vast suspended web across the exhibition space. Each key acts as a vessel of memory, carrying fragments of private lives, while the red threads—evoking blood vessels and threads of fate—interweave these individual memories into a collective narrative.

Shiota’s use of found objects resonates with my own method of collecting fragmented body images to construct a digital archive of memory. The connective tension of the red threads metaphorically mirrors the reassembly of trauma fragments, much like the visible seams in my collages that reveal both rupture and repair. Her work prompts me to reflect on how ordinary materials, when magnified in scale, can evoke profound emotional impact, and how the symbolic potential of materials can transform personal memory into a shared, universal experience.

Shiota, Chiharu. “CHIHARU SHIOTA–塩田千春.” CHIHARU SHIOTA, 2015. https://www.chiharu-shiota.com/the-key-in-the-hand-1.

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Annette Messager

Annette Messager, Mes voeux –My vows, 1989. Installation view of Annette Messager: motion / emotion, 2014, MCA Australia. Gelatin silver photographs, colour pencil on paper, string. Purchased 1993, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

This series is composed of numerous black-and-white photographs, each focusing on a fragment of the human body. Suspended throughout the exhibition space, they form a vast, walk-through “waterfall of visual archives.” Arranged in deliberate patterns—sometimes interwoven, sometimes lined up—the photographs create a unique aesthetic that sits between private collection and public archive.

The artist intentionally avoids mounting the photos flat on walls, instead letting them become spatial objects that reshape the viewer’s experience. This inspired my shift from digital collage to physical collage, allowing my work to fully engage the audience in space. Messager’s methods of wrapping, stitching, and layering also influenced me, encouraging the creation of a new visual language and a careful balance between order and chaos.

www.mca.com.au. “Annette Messager: Motion / Emotion | Exhibitions | MCA Australia,” n.d. https://www.mca.com.au/exhibitions/annette-messager-motion-emotion/.

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Critical Annotation

In the second semester of my MFA program, my research focuses on the female body, societal standards, memory, and the growth through trauma. I aim to conduct artistic inquiries into bodily traces, identity, and self-expression. From the idealization of the female form in classical sculpture to the objectification and discipline of women in contemporary society, I question whether evolving times have altered the standards imposed on women. Through the exploration of relevant artists, artworks, and literature, I seek to redefine the autonomy of the female body.

My research is organized around five thematic categories, each corresponding to the core concepts and multidimensional evaluative criteria of my artistic practice.

The first category concerns the critique of the female body and social norms. The key words I give are regulation, objectification and body politics. Some of the symbolic stamps are used as metaphors for the shaping of the female body and female roles by society, the family and even women themselves. This includes artist Cindy Sherman's Centerfold series(1) that goes to allude to cover girls and pornographic magazines, triggering associations through the perspective of those in positions of power. I think that apart from the metaphors related to the women themselves and their supplies, the compositions are also an important way to give hints.

The second category is the visual expression of memory and trauma. Through wounds, fragmentation, and repair and splicing to represent mutilation and wholeness. The oppression and plight of women is explored in terms of the temporality of trauma and the fragmentation of memory. This includes Louise Bourgeois's series cells (2), in which mutilated bodies are contrasted with metal spheres that fill an enclosed space, expressing the sealing of memory and the timelessness of time.

The third category is based on the material of my creations, white latex, and metaphors for the skin, which invoke bondage, fragility, and plasticity. An important example of this is Heidi Bucher's series on skinnings (3), in which she utilises the ‘peelability’ of latex to create huge skinned rooms. In the process of peeling latex away from the body, from architecture, from the scene of life, it signifies the liberation of women from bondage. But it also emphasises the vulnerability of the skin as an aspect of social contact.

The fourth category concerns natural symbols. The key words I gave were cosmic, cycle, healing. This includes Judy Chicago's installation The dinner party (4), which emphasises that women should be documented in history. Forcing people to face up to women's fertility and traditional skills, the triangular composition is used to represent the unity and solidity of women's strength. The use of nature images echoes the cyclical and inevitable nature of natural laws.

The final category is fragmentation and reorganisation. Violence is explored and critiqued through collage, deconstruction and the reconstruction of female identity. Among them, artist kiki Smith's (5)three sets of nudes, ‘Untitled (Train)’, ‘Pee Body’ and ‘Tale’, reconstruct the body sculpture and metaphor of women's process of reinventing themselves by connecting glass beads to the female body.

(1)Segrest.E. (2024). “Cindy Sherman and Feminist Art.” ArtRKL. ArtRKL. April 29, 2024.

https://artrkl.com/blogs/news/cindy-sherman-and-feminist-art.

(2)Homepage. n.d. “Louise Bourgeois. Strukturen Des Daseins: Die Zellen.” Haus Der Kunst.

https://www.hausderkunst.de/en/eintauchen/louise-bourgeois-structures-of-existence-the-cells.

(3)Mendes Woods DM. 2023. “Heidi Bucher.” Mendes Wood DM.

https://mendeswooddm.com/artists/38-heidi-bucher/.

(4)Brooklyn Museum. 2024. “The Dinner Party.” Brooklyn Museum.

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/zh-CN/objects/5167.

(5)Perreault, John. 2006. “Kiki Smith: Glass Is the New Fat | Artopia.” Artsjournal.com.

December 4, 2006. https://www.artsjournal.com/artopia/2006/12/kiki_smith_glass_is_the_new_fa.html.

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Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman Untitled #92 1981 Chromogenic color print 61 x 121.9 cm / 24 x 48 in.

Cindy Sherman Untitled #95 1981 Chromogenic color print 61 x 121.9 cm / 24 x 48 in.

Cindy Sherman Untitled #96 1981 Chromogenic color print 61 x 121.9 cm / 24 x 48 in.

I observed that Cindy Sherman’s Centerfolds series employs elevated camera angles and horizontal compositions, echoing the layout of men's magazines. The young women depicted often avert their gaze, displaying expressions of fear and unease, which may suggest the objectification inherent in the male gaze. The use of overhead perspectives and confined spaces evokes a sense of suffocation. The horizontal framing mimics the cropping style of pornographic magazines, linking the female form to consumerist pleasures. Sherman’s deliberate manipulation of color and lighting—particularly the use of top lighting—creates a feeling of exposure, while the resulting shadows resemble an abyss of oppression.

Additionally, Sherman’s work conveys a sense of melancholy. The young women appear to be in a state of aftermath, their weary and vacant stares capturing a moment of cruelty and sadness, as if they are perpetually being watched. The exclusive focus on youth may imply a societal valuation of women based on age, raising questions about the devaluation of women as they age.

Sherman’s portrayal of skin emphasizes a sense of "sickness," challenging the idealization of flawless skin. In my own latex skin creations, I pour wax to represent the aspiration for a perfect female form; the subsequent cracking and peeling visualize the process of objectification. Through her work, Sherman reinforces the connection between societal constraints and the act of resistance.

Segrest.E. (2024). “Cindy Sherman and Feminist Art.” ArtRKL. ArtRKL. April 29, 2024.

https://artrkl.com/blogs/news/cindy-sherman-and-feminist-art.

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Hannah Wilke

Hannah Wilke. S.O.S. Starification Object Series. 1974-82

Wilke transforms scars and wounds into decorative symbols. Chewing gum, used as a visual element, represents softness, malleability, and adhesive dependence. When stuck onto the naked female body, it symbolizes society’s misguided perception that the female body is infinitely shapeable. As a post-consumer waste product, chewing gum also alludes to the commodification of the female body. The model boldly reveals these wounds, suggesting a woman’s confrontation with aesthetic violence and her active stance in reshaping her identity.

I noticed that the title of the work includes the word “Starification”, a neologism combining “star” and “scarification.” It appears to satirize how modern celebrities harm their bodies in the pursuit of beauty. The inclusion of “SOS” as a distress signal implies that these bodily symbols are silent cries for help. The scars themselves serve as the most powerful evidence of the oppression women endure.

The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. n.d. “The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation.” The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/hannah-wilke.

MoMA. 2019. “S.O.S. - Starification Object Series.” The Museum of Modern Art. MoMA. 2019. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/102432.