Beauty Uncut: Empowered Aesthetics in the Digital Age
What is beauty? In this article, originally published for Judas Magazine, I interview 4 artists who I believe question the role of the beauty industry and challenge the contemporary aesthetic to reconsider the concept of beauty as a radically destabilising tool. Beauty as a process, not an endpoint. Beauty as a question, never an answer.
Were you (mis)sold a beauty ideal standard between the time you were given your first glance of acceptance into this world until now? If so, unfortunately you cannot claim back all the years of anxiety and low self-esteem produced in desperately trying to squeeze into this size 0 or rather, 1.6180327868852* commonly known as the Fibonacci ratio or perfect beauty standard, that has graced our ungrateful faces with its Euclidean plastic surgeon-standard sense of symmetry, order and mathematical precision. No, sadly there is no number you can call and no money-back guarantee. You won’t even be seeing adverts about this plastered all over the web or affixed next to your bus stop as you frantically scribble eyeliner into your cornea before you’re whisked off into another sludge of performative existential dread. I picture myself now, tiny, minuscule and defenceless as I tug at my mummy’s pleated skirt with an air of savoir faire recalling “you told me I was beautiful?” as I preemptively get slapped in the face by the myriad of beauty products and societal expectations that lurk within my predetermined near-future. Have we been mis-sold a product or a lifestyle? A commodity or a condition? Has the so-called beauty industry packaged, rebranded, and sold not only the beauty items we so-desperately wanted but also humanity itself into an easily disposable and commodifiable product? If Foucault distrusted the ‘medical gaze’ and its presumptuous assumptions on gender, sexuality and mental health, I am now on the lookout to debunk what I call the ‘beautiful gaze’, the media’s obsession with beauty standards, notions of femininity, masculinity, perfection, sizes, weights, lengths, roles, expected behaviours…. you get it. But then I stumble across artists who help me regain faith in humanity, help reshape the idea of beauty and remind me that no, I cannot find this ‘beauty’ in the chilled aisles of a convenience store nor in the hottest look-books of most glossy magazines. Artists like Genesis from the Irish wilderness or Xelda from the Brooklyn, New York drag scene. Aun and Ecto from Brazil, the country with the highest proportion of hate crimes against people who choose to identify outside of the cis spectrum. What follows is the unpackaged, unbranded, uncensored and undefined version of what beauty can mean.
In “Ten Thousand Ugly Ink Blots”, the 17th century Chinese painter Shi Tao, playfully mocked the normative standards of beauty in art by splattering his perfectly painted landscape with ‘ugly’ ink blots. This might seem like an odd thing to do, but in Eastern art and philosophy, the difference between beauty and ugliness is fractured, its edges uneven and cracked just like Japanese wabi-sabi pottery in one of Junichiro Tanizaki’s novels. Or, just like in Genesis’ juxtaposition of light, darkness, gloom and glamour in the looks which she creates to “find beauty in the contrast between things that are supposed to be beautiful and those that are supposed to be rotten”. Genesis, a self-defined “any pronouns kind of angel” who, as genderqueer, does not identify either solely as female nor as male, uses these so-called ‘contrasts’ society oh so loves to pit against one another, to empower herself. Growing up in a small town in Ireland, Genesis was constantly confronted with the ideology of ‘normal’ versus ‘abnormal’ and all the sticky expectations and behaviours that come attached with it. “The lust for the ordinary is something I despise because it’s made me feel like parts of myself were bad because they didn’t fit with people’s idea of what normal should be”, says Genesis reflecting upon growing up in a place where misogyny and bullying towards anything or anyone that is extra-ordinary or outside the norm is still extremely prevalent. Yet whilst growing up in a small town undoubtedly has its negative sides, Genesis was quick to find the beautiful even amongst the ugly and, rather than solely focusing on the bigoted judgements of those around her, looked out to the beauty and power granted by Ireland’s rich folklore culture and nature, “sometimes I go for walks around the lake near where I live just to study the swans, I’ll look at them for hours and get inspiration for eye makeup.” Yet, whilst locked within the desire, on the one hand to “run away and live in London, wearing silk dresses and combat boots every day” and taking in the Irish wildlife, Genesis used this tension to explore the intimate and authentic relationship between herself and her surroundings. Challenging the dichotomies we are presented with on a daily basis can be exhausting, but it is also extremely rewarding and gives us a sense of agency towards the seemingly unchangeable toxic environments humans seem to want to create around themselves. This idea of creating something out of the dirt society constructs almost reminds me that we can all, irrespectively of our biological sex, give birth to something new. For Genesis, “motherhood is a constant theme” and one that she incorporates in a lot of her looks by drawing inspiration from her love of dolls and the positive relationship with her mother, allowing Genesis to express her feminine side and discover all its multifaceted beauty. “Makeup unleashes the inner woman in me more than clothes or anything else”, and whilst initially, a lot of her looks came from being inspired by the classic drag aesthetic, Genesis quickly abandoned that look and started afresh by looking at what it means to grow up in Ireland, her childhood memories as well as being inspired by stop-motion artists like the Brothers Quay, Henry Selick and Paul Berry’s ‘The Sandman’ who all play with the dichotomies between darkness and light and horror and romance. Through platforms like Instagram, Genesis finds a “safe space, especially for young queer artists like myself, to share their art raw and without any limits on creative vision”, this allows her to express herself without having to worry about being different or unrelatable, it is a way for her to reconcile all the contrasting feelings, landscapes and inspirations and recreate them as art, just like other Instagram artists she admires do, like Parma Ham (@parmaham), Fecal Matter (@matieresfecales) or Coma (@img_57.mov). Pushing the boundaries between art, gender and technology is something that powers Genesis to look beyond reality and enter a world where she is the creator, one where so-called ‘perfection’ comes her way, rather than by being dictated by other people’s standards. “I’m obsessed with 3D artists creating something that is so perfect that it can’t be real”, Genesis says, whilst referencing artists like Ines Alpha (also featured in this issue) who use computer generated images to create bespoke makeup looks. Genesis, to me is the full embodiment of how contradictions, opposites, dichotomies, call them what you will — can come together and produce something unique, surreal and authentic.
Xelda, pronounced “Zelda, like the Hylian Princess”, like Genesis, also started off with the classic drag look: “when I first started going out with makeup and wigs on, I was following the ‘drag norms’: black wing liner, cut creases, 301 lashes, severe contouring — all that stuff.” But, differently from the suburban, quiet wilderness of the Irish countryside, Xelda hails from Brooklyn, New York, where the long-standing tradition of queer culture ranges back to the Stonewall Riots in 1969, a moment in time that was crucial in the liberation of LGBT+ rights not only in the United States but throughout the world. “I’m very grateful to be living in a city where unconventional beauty is celebrated so strongly”, says Xelda, who also doesn’t really care about pronouns and mostly gets referred to as she/her when out in character. Growing up in an environment that constantly pushes your boundaries and makes you excited to explore the liminality of existence, definitely inspires artists like Xelda, which goes to show how important creative, liberal and free thinking environments can be in helping artists flourish, “I love Brooklyn drag because anyone is invited and there’s a little something for everyone: it’s glamour, it’s filthy, it’s conceptual, it’s hairy, it’s over-the-top, it’s wild — all of which are beautiful.” Xelda’s aesthetic goes beyond drag, verging into what she defines as “trauma witch”, an eclectic and supernatural conflation of “all my biggest loves and influences” from the Salem witch trials to spell-casters in role player games or Satanism as seen through the lens of conservative America. ‘Trauma witch’ represents a departure from the ‘drag aesthetic’ that had undoubtedly been a major source of inspiration for Xelda — it embodies a radical shift, not merely aesthetically but also psychologically, on how she views herself: “I used to feel a distinct difference from Kyle to Xelda… but recently I’ve been much more adventurous with my ‘everyday’ looks. I’ve been collecting shirts and dresses with strange patterns and wearing more makeup looks out in the daytime which has been very liberating.” This inward shift, which brings Xelda’s character closer to the everyday reality of Kyle has been “a very natural and fun change” and one that created a shift between doing drag for others and “performing the typical pop songs that I thought would be crowd pleasers” to “creating exactly what I want to.” and taking inspiration from the deepest fears, battles and truths to the point where “I don’t know if I should even consider myself a ‘drag queen’ anymore.” By unleashing these fears, Xelda’s aesthetic becomes impregnated with new aesthetics which she then releases to the world. “Every new piece is like my baby — a physical representation of my deepest fears”, once she creates them and nurtures them, they are “no longer in my little universe — they’re in the real world for everyone to see and it’s scary and visceral but also so rewarding.” By conceiving these creations herself as a DIY artist and mostly using her ‘holy trinity’ of cardboard, plastic bags and duct tape, Xelda creates unconventional looks that go beyond the usual categories, thus creating looks that reveal much more than just an aesthetic style. Most people shun away from traumatic experiences and fears, but by doing so they also run away from one of the most powerful experiences one could have. Xelda embraces these seemingly negative experiences fully, reminding me of another artist who also embraces trauma — the Korean performer and artist Lee Bul whose monstrous, cyborgic and surreal artworks elicit both a feeling of unease as harmony. At the opening of her show at the London Hayward Gallery, Lee Bul recalled one of the pivotal moments that inspired her to create the art she does. It is a story both beautiful and tragic — a motorbike accident in the streets of her hometown in South Korea, sees a woman being flung in a beautifully arched way straight into the glass of a bakery revealing an intricate pastry of luscious blood, scrumptious cake-icing and shattered glass all convoluting within the same dramatic image. The colours, smells and opulency of such event struck a chord within the artist making her realise the beauty behind traumatic experiences. “The traumas we all face in today’s world have a different side that can be viewed as very beautiful”, says Xelda, “these battles within our own minds can be the toughest war anyone can face, but once you start tackling those fears head-on, you can begin to grow and learn exponentially.”
Whilst seeing the beauty in tragedy can be therapeutic and even enlightening, there are some tragedies, like those committed against queer people around the world, that should simply stop happening. Last year alone (2017), at least 445 LGBT+ people in Brazil died in hate-related crimes, including one that’s too close to home for AUN: “I live in Brazil, the country that kills the most trans people in the world, and this is very real, this month a friend of mine, Theusa Passareli, died and was burned, when just days before she was talking to me about her dreams.” Theusa, a prominent figure in the art scene of Rio De Janeiro who identified as genderqueer, was just twenty-one years old. It puts into perspective just how tragic, violent and most of all how unfair being born in a different latitude makes existence. The stark difference between the creative and accepting environment Xelda described in New York and that put forth by AUN reminds us how unfortunately, narrow-mindedness and bigotry are still rampant, meaning that in a lot of places worldwide, showcasing one ‘type’ of beauty over another really is a matter between life and death. “AUN is here to create a new world, to create a new form of love, to exist, where all my manas (Brazilian slang for ‘queer mates’) can live without fear”, and AUN does this by challenging the physiognomy of the human, by rejecting the aesthetic of ‘traditional beauty’ and by breaking the rules of what is biologically possible. Because the real and only ‘out of the ordinary’ here is the evil humanity is capable of, an evil that reveals the mere brutality of the human species that is often hidden under an insidious lacklustre layer of rotting ‘beauty’. AUN wants to destroy this system of oppression and uses experimentation as his main tool: “I give myself a new body, a new form of communication through pictures, videos, performances and music. I am hacking at the system that I live within, this macho white cis world that doesn’t want us to experiment but rather wants to keep us sedated in the world they already created.” If the natural environment you are in is eponymous with a state of fear, persecution and death, you’d do anything to modify it, distort this nature and create a new one. AUN’s distorted beauty is at constant battle with its surroundings, absorbing all the negativity and using it as a new serum, fresh blood and flesh to feed his creations with. “When I make art, I like to castrate myself, not only my penis, but everything that makes people read me as a man — and I am not condemning men’s bodies, but the socially constructed image of men. The image that I was born to ‘be’ but I’m not, and will never be.” Beauty takes on a new form, a new meaning — it is no longer there to please the senses, it is there to expose the cracks, pains and volatility of existence: “I give myself a new form of beauty, because the beauty that everyone loves is the beauty that also kills me and my manas because we don’t fit the aesthetic they created.” It doesn’t surprise me then, if AUN’s looks intentionally ask for people in the Brazilian streets to turn around in awe and probably disgust, or as AUN puts it, makes them “run across the street and vomit.” To AUN, the creation of his art is not simply for himself, nor just for aesthetics — but rather becomes political. AUN becomes a fight against injustices, a call for activism, a symbol for resistance because “life is politics, and this is the only way I can survive.” If, to ‘fit in’ and survive one must renounce their sexuality, individuality and creativity — then life is reduced to mere existence, and existence down to bare breathing, the osmosis between cells, atoms, particles — and at that point, we all look the same, fragments of existences scattered around the universe with no real purpose except to bump into one another and either repel or attract until perhaps, one day, as AUN hopes, “people of all ages, colours, sexuality… can experience their bodies in all the different ways, shapes and forms, becoming real scientists of their own bodies.”
Yet science brings with it both progress and regress — technology is moving at a faster and faster pace and, like in Alvin Toffler’s ‘Future Shock’, sometimes the speed of change exceeds our ability to understand it creating a larger and larger gap between the production and consumption of this technology. We can now augment our features chemically via pills, physically by going under the knife and also synthetically via editing and 3D softwares. Like AUN, Ecto also comes from Brazil and experiences life in one of the most dangerous places for queer artists to inhabit through his invented Ecto Corporation, a toxic-looking aesthetic enterprise out of which he produces venomous-inspired looks that feed Ecto’s “hunger for a better future for LGBTQ”. “The Ecto Corporation, which has a figurative and ambiguous meaning, represents the world’s most rich corporations as well as the act of incorporating something within ourselves”, it is a cut-in-cheek and sarcastic name that aims to reveal how technology has so far been used negatively to augment the differences between people rather than bringing them together. “We are walking into a biochemical future, but as we can already see, humanity has been using technology badly. For example, only rich people have access to medical technology, meaning that we just keep propagating the same unequal society”, through Ecto Corporation, the hazards of biotechnology are aesthetically seized and turned into a provocation, a call for action, an appeal for people to start looking at what they’re becoming and what future they really want to create for the next generations — a future where everyone is able to express themselves freely or one where only a selected few are given this privilege? Ecto began taking photos of friends and altering them using digital softwares, distorting their human biology like a virus infection until becoming “addicted to seeing the many possibilities changing the face could bring” like mutations or an exploration of all the different sides of humanity in all its different forms of beauty. What Ecto embodies is the devolution of humanity — our obsession with creating newer and more advanced technologies at the expense of humans and their life. A world where consumerism and big corporations trade our security, our information and our very own lives in exchange of a fictitious sense of progress or aesthetic. “I think the real evolution is very far”, says Ecto — who externalises this sense of uneasiness by using makeup and by encouraging people to “get the oppressive beauty patterns society dictates and throw them out of the window.” If existence for people who identify as queer is symptomatic of a disease, a sickness, a toxic melange of hate crime and violence in a society that would rather spend money creating wonderfully deceitful technological illusions rather than solving real problems, then I cannot but see Ecto Corporation becoming bigger and bigger as it spreads its virus and hopefully infects more people.
So what is beauty? Perhaps beauty could be seen as a tool that should radically destabilise us and never end with a finite, complete and wholesome appeal to the senses. It must rather push us to ask for more, to investigate it, repurpose it, to rethink what it means and what it can and should do for us in the future. Beauty as a process, not an endpoint. Beauty as a question, never an answer.
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