All the World’s a Display vol. II - Beauty Frames

31.08.2017 - 2.09.2017
Veinti4/Siete Galerìa, San Josè, Costa Rica

Curated by: Raffaella Matrone

Artist: Anna Rose

Through a series of exhilarant mise en scene of the modern cults of beauty, artist Anna Rose traces the concept of the vanitas in a modern key. Vanitas originally referred to the futility of earthly presence and possessions - acting as a reminder of our own mortality - but changed use and meaning through history. Nowadays, this concept finds its dimension in our everyday life through the use of the word vanity, which appears transformed from vice to virtue.

Questioning the passage of time and the fluidity of appearance, the videos illustrate modern practice of vanity from a new perspective: with the series Life Hacks, objects usually devoted to our nourishment - such as potatoes and coconuts - have a sad encounter with razors and waxes, in order to comply with the modern standards of beauty. In this sense, also food takes part in the routines to perfect its own body. Food has always been considered as a tool to achieve better health and body through diets tailored to each person. However, The Mediterranean Diet is generally considered as the healthiest diet to achieve the best results. In the homonymous video, the artist enact a make-up tutorial using the basic items of the diet in an alternative way, examining rituals and mythology surrounding food and vanity. Following the tutorial instructions on how to allow the body to reveal its best features, as happens in Teresita, where the artist becomes the personification of a female figure akin to Mona Lisa: ambiguous, mercurial, sensual and desperate. The ritual continues when the artist reads the text out loud in the background, with a tone that becomes at times critical and confused, and at others unconvinced and amused.

The concept of beauty, as well as its standards, has shifted through the ages but with the same imperishable root: food, beauty and ideals are ephemeral, destined to perish by age or consumption. 

Image credits: Courtesy of Veinti4/Siete Galería, photos by Pablo Murillo