Reshaping and resisting images of beauty
Date : April 2016
Location : Bremerton Art Community Studio, London, UK
Collaborators : Mamiko Yamasaki / Concept development, Graphic design
Shanshan Liu / Communication design
Georgia Jacob / Concept development, Performance
Lea Nagano / Filming and Editing
Pei-Hsin Chen, Arif Rahman Wahid / Photography
Using humour as a critical tool, Instant Beauty Clinic is an art installation examining why women consider undergoing physical transformations to conform to beauty standards. A one-to-one guided- experience, it addresses social pressures influencing how women think about their bodies.
Instant Beauty Clinic addresses women who are dissatisfied with their body image and are considering physical changes. However, it encourages them to be more resistant to the misleading images they receive daily from the beauty industry.
>>> Click the images to see full size
The Instant Beauty Clinic opened on the 2nd April 2016, transforming the Bemerton Art Community Studio into a conceptual pop-up clinic. The visitors of the clinic were taken through a quick body transformation journey – from reception, consulting room, treatment room to the lounge, being guided by Instant Beauty Clinic receptionist, consultant, and treatment physician, who respectively played the voice of commercial industries. Through this experience, the audience is made question how they see their bodies, the social pressures surrounding their bodies, and face the truths behind the industry selling them images of beauty.
Instant Beauty Clinic creates a playful atmosphere reinforcing women’s sense of power and independence to shape their own bodies.
This diagram shows the project’s flow from its research question, dramatic conflict, design direction, outcomes and success criteria of the project in order.
In terms of the project outcomes, as is well known, creating positive body image with increasing self-esteem might not happen in the short term of temporary events or workshop. Therefore, the outcomes specifically broke down into three main outcomes:
- The audience can be more critical and resilient about the misleading beauty images
- The audience can think about the future decisions of their body
- The audience can think about their role and the potential power that can influence others and society
These defined outcomes shaped the design of the visitor experience and encouraged the project to focus on reaching its 4 success criteria.
>>> Click to experience the Instant Beauty Clinic‘
Yewon Shim 