“Two Sides of the Same Coin”
Gareth Cowley and Nicole Mathers
Used Discarded Make-Up on Fabric
From the artists:
These two portraits are of essentially the same girl. In some ways the first is the girl as God intended her to be, healthy, happy, safe, while the other is ravaged by poverty, famine, disease and abuse.
What is perhaps most startling is our concept of beauty, represented by the fact that the pieces have been created entirely out of discarded make-up, which is so twisted by social conventions that we don’t look past the face. This is further magnified by the caricatural nature of the pieces – the girls, particularly the first, are real but exaggerated at the same time, a comment on our “beauty” culture.
Their eyes tell a story to which their scars, or lack there of, testify. These girls aren’t just strangers, they’re your daughter, your sister, your cousin, your niece, that girl who you see on the street. When you look at these two girls, remember that it’s all the things we have in this world which made them, for better or worse. If there was any question that these pictures put forward, it’s this – why is the destiny of every single child determined by the place they live, and the actions of others?
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