For this assignment I mainly drew from the work of Liz Peniazava for inspiration. Like we talked about in class Liz uses images of women from old playboy and pinup magazines and creates new context by contrasting their sexuality with bright femininity (such as flowers). She also defaces most of the women which makes their sexuality anonymous and seemingly uniform. Her use of bright colors and flowers exaggerates the eroticism of these women but also makes them inviting and pleasing to look at although some of them are somewhat crude.      

I was especially interested in her idea of covering the face and mimicked that idea in my own pieces. The idea of female beauty and femininity is constantly being advertised and projected to the world. Young girls often compare themselves to these images of what a female is supposed to look like and how she should behave. Although many people look at models bodies and strive to achieve that same thin and long shape I think there is something intriguing about the face and the idea of the perfect or the more desirable face. When the face is taken away what really are we? The face is the most defining feature of a person, it is how we navigate our world. In fact, our brains are hardwired to recognize faces even in inanimate objects. So when the face is removed we become unrecognizable and seemingly just like everyone else. This also means that we would not be able to navigate a world without faces and thus be lost all together. In comparison what about the act of putting on faces that don’t belong to us? For example, the act of putting on make-up or putting on a happy face when inside you are crying. I played with this idea by putting faces on top of other faces and also by detaching faces from their original source to reveal something underneath.      

http://www.lizpeniazeva.com/2018/2/25/welcome-home
http://www.curvemag.com/Culture/Cut-It-Out-Feminist-Collage-Artist-Liz-Peniazeva-Is-Reimagining-Queer-Contact-Relations-1901/