Effortless Beauty

I am interested in the obsession in Asian beauty culture around the definitions of beauty and perfection. Most Asian societies’ beauty standards are centered around eurocentric ideals— high nose bridges, sharp nose, double eyelids, big bright eyes, egg-shaped face. With the high saturation and consumption of these ideals via the media, people are more than ever pressured, nearly brainwashed, to want to conform. The most deranged part of this belief system is the transformation process. These women put in strenuous effort and even undergo the horrors of body modification through makeup or cosmetic surgery to ultimately reveal a look of effortless beauty. I want to deconstruct and reveal the laborious process of Asian beautification by paralleling a similar approach in producing an effortless final image. Through the risograph, I am able to produce a photographic image that is the base of my print. I then dampen the riso and position it onto the plexiglass plate. Next, I ran the print through the press four times to apply enough pressure to transfer my riso image. Finally, all of this effort is rewarded with a single fragile print and I then proceeded to repeat this laborious process over and over again.  

Effortless Beauty, 2018. Riso monoprints, 19 x 24 in