Advanced Life Drawing : Beauty Meets Technology

For this project, I was inspired to create futuristic figures that showcase advancements in technology and beauty standards. I wanted to create figures that were a hybrid of natural human bodies and technological modifications. I imagine these figures existing in our world in the not to distant future. As a society, we already have a tendency to modify our bodies, whether it is more beauty or health reasons. I think that in the future these tendencies will become more standard than they already are. In the future, I can see individuals putting actual pieces of technology onto and into their bodies. The three figures I presented in my piece are a glimpse into what I believe could become a reality one day. I wanted to make these figures unsettling to the viewer in a variety of ways. By making them bodiless, I wanted emphasize the modifications done to their face and hair. By making them eyeless, I wanted to showcase that while they might be humans to the core, they also are machinelike.

My main influence for this piece was Agnieszka Osipa. Although she is not an artist in the traditional sense, to me she is. Agnieszka is a Polish costume designer I recently stumbled upon. When I first saw photos of her work, it stopped me in my tracks because of how different it was. Her work mainly consists of elaborate headdresses and gowns. She infuses Eastern European traditions with elements of fantasy. Her works are undoubtedly beautiful, but also evoke a sort of eeire darkness. I hoped to capture this unsettling feeling that comes from her works, as well as the rich detail that goes into each of them. She uses luxurious materials like lace, pearls, fine metals, and jewels. I tried to mimic the same sense of detail, but with materials that seemed more futuristic and cyborg like. I also wanted to show the same precision that she shows in her work. While her works take months to complete and I didn’t have that kind of time, I still wanted to use small materials and make my designs precise.

Another one of my influences was the beauty standards of the Capitol in the Hunger Games. In the movies and the books, the Capitol represents the most of elite of the population. Many of the residents have has extreme beauty procedures and body modifications done that fit the drastic beauty standards of the time. Seeing as the Hunger Games acts as sort of a social commentary on what could happen in the future, it seems realistic that beauty procedures like the ones shown could exist one day.