This series was made in Asia, Singapore and Seoul, South Korea. Corinne Mariaud wonders about the importance that many young women place on physical appearance.
It highlights the diktat of the image and the representations of femininity in contemporary society. Young girls place beauty at the top of the most important thing in their life, they use every possible tool to improve their appearance. They wear enlarging and colored lenses, to have bigger and clearer eyes. These lenses mask the look but reveal their “ideal ego”.
In South Korea, the pursuit of perfection is pushed to the extreme. Beauty becomes a criteria of social integration. Very young girls practice plastic surgery intensively, sometimes as young as 15 years old. The importance is given to an archetype of beauty: bigger eyes (Bambi eyes), light bulge under the eyes, oval face (V smile), sharper nose, raised corners of the lips, lighter skin. One ends up wanting to reach the perfection of these retouched images. The face becomes a personal construction of oneself and can be constantly rethought until reaching an ideal physique. The physical is no longer a fatality, we can take power over its appearance.
Corinne Mariaud was born in 1964, lives and works in Paris. This work is part of Corinne Mariaud’s reflection on gender stereotypes, the identity and subjugation of bodies. She has worked on this series for two years, traveling between Singapore and Korea, looking for her models through social networks.
Corinne Mariaud, FAKE i REAL ME
November 10 – December 22, 2018
Myriam Bouagal Gallery
20 rue du Pont aux Choux
75003 Paris
myriambouagalgalerie.com
