Printmaking & Contemporary Practice
Sarah O’Donovan
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My work reflects the overwhelming pressure and unattainable beauty standards placed on women in today’s media-driven society. It primarily focuses on the struggles and extreme lengths one must go to, to achieve an accepted standard of beauty. Through my research, I have found that a high percentage of women believe that they must think of themselves as a product of society—a product that is well-packaged and created with pain-striking precision and must match the prerequisite beauty and body requirements set out for them.
They are a product that is developed, not by internal desires but by external sources that they have no influence over—social media being the most dominant of these sources. I have incorporated physical objects that women often use, such as make-up removal wipes, foundation utensils and fake tan mitts; and explored each of these discarded items in an abstract closeness.
This body of work explores the ‘debris’ associated with the pre-conditioned, mandatory and gender-exclusive maintenance of the beauty ritual. The close-up imagery investigates the individual fragments at an intimate level. These pieces represent bodily trash with a critical lens, the images transforming the debris from object matter to forms worthy of objectification.
I have combined the debris with everyday commentary, and identified the extreme lengths the female has to go to in order to meet the beauty standards that are in place. My work serves as an opportunity to have a larger conversation about the role of internalized and externalized misogyny and aims to convey how misogynistic behaviour more often than not, goes unnoticed in society.