Queen of the Plastics

A nod to Mean Girls, this work comments on artificial, unattainable beauty standards that cycle through throw-away societies.

Suspended like specters of expectation, delicate shrink-wrapped forms hover overhead, allowing distorted light to pass through. These empty shapes cast warped shadows, on a solitary female mask below, reflecting the invisible and ominous pressures that nag women into molding themselves into what is considered “beautiful” by society. Waxen tears obstruct the clay mask’s natural beauty; she exists in the shadow of artificial constructs that society champions one day and discards the next. Her crown, forged from jagged shards of a shattered motorcycle shield found on a Roman curb, becomes both relic and weapon- a symbol of the violent fracturing of self-worth in the pursuit of surface perfection.

Crafted from second-hand plastic (pallet wrapping), this piece uses material not only as medium but as metaphor. Plastic- malleable, mass-produced, and enduring, embodies the transformation demanded of women: to continuously reshape, conceal, and polish themselves into versions more palatable to society, where beauty is a moving target. In the pursuit of beauty, we have ended up with copy and past models of women who present identically as a result of adhering to current plastic surgery and fashion trends.

The same culture that glorifies the artificial when it is new and gleaming turns away in disgust when it becomes inconvenient, dated, or too revealing of its origin. So too are women celebrated for their transformation—until the illusion wears thin.

This work is a meditation on artificiality and erasure. It explores the overlap between environmental waste and the commodification of identity, revealing a culture that worships artificial over organic and authentic. It asks: what is left behind when we turn our back on “natural” in exchange for the palatable, the real for superficial perfection, the self for the mask, the organic material for the synthetic… what happens to all the fillers, fast fashion and single use plastic in a culture that fosters insatiable consumption?

Installed at Loyola University of Chicago’s John Felice Rome Center in Italy. May-August 2019.