Carolyn’s Team Pick:
Yolanda Dominguez, a Mandrid-based artist, is known for projects that question and critique attitudes about women. Her project “Poses,” in which non-model-shaped people recreate actual fashion magazine poses, aims to highlight the ridiculousness (and sometimes harmfulness) of the fashion world.
In an interview with It’s Nice That, Dominguez said,
“I tried to express what many women feel about women’s magazines and the image of women in the media – absurd, artificial, a hanger to wear dresses and bags, only concerned about being skinny, beautiful. We don’t identify with this type of woman – we are much more. I used the impossible poses to represent this type of woman and to show how absurd it is in a real context.
These artificial models are the only reference we have and many women want to be like them but this is not natural and is causing many disorders (eating, mental, behavioural).
On the other hand poses of the women are ridiculous – they seem dead, twisted, pulled. […]
I try to express deep questions (sometimes dramatic) but always with irony and humour. I feel that when you can laugh at something you can get rid of it.”
Her project places several actresses from a theatre group in fashion poses on public benches, by a museum, in front of a market, and in a garden, and films spectator reactions, which range from confusion to annoyance to police warnings to getting help because the woman in question appears dead. This is what it looks like:
Visit Dominguez’s site to see more of her projects.
