BONNIE 

My work is concerned with societal visualizations of gender roles and whether our preconceived notions of beauty come from biological sources or are fashioned through ever changing cultural expectations. 

 

Many of my works question this very paradox. Are we influenced through advertising, or is it our innate human nature that forms the violent, sexual, and even humorous imagery that floods our media? Choosing imagery and materials based on color alone, I allow the imagery to be from a wide and varied cross-section of photographic and contemporary media. Materials come from a variety of sources: Teen Vogue, the New Yorker, Better Homes and Gardens, the Cosmopolitan, National Geographic, historical painting, and craft materials. The combination allows for landscapes and figures of unknown gender and physical characteristics to take shape, born out of chaos. Is this a constructed beast or is it built out of natural human desires?

 

Having constant exposure to sexualized images of skin and the body, the body has become a commodity in Western culture. Finding humor in the absurdity of the obsession of appearance, I am overemphasizing the sensuality, creating scenes that are both beautiful and ridiculous. My work asks the question: Where do beauty, eroticism, repulsion and the absurd connect?