| Shirin Aliabadi, Iran
In light of the current fashion trends among young Iranian women, "Miss Hybrid" aims at capturing the aesthetic nuances that shape, reshape and reinvent the identity of the new Iranian girl.
Under the hospice of the Islamic veil, the "in look" is blond hair, blue, green or grey contact lenses, occasional facial piercing and most importantly, surgical nose tape which seems to have become a fashion “must have” among the targeted group. Miss Hybrid can be seen as a make-believe alternative beauty pageant believing that natural beauty is unfair, elitist and practically irrelevant, while artificial beauty sparked by an insatiable need to transform into someone else, via cosmetic intervention, can be regarded as a healthy exercise in cultural rebellion and global integration, therefore, considered fair game and worthy of attention.
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This project explores the creative formal aspects of censorship as seen in this collection of vintage local and western-censored magazines in Iran. Before young girls reach puberty they can be dressed up and made to look beautiful in the western sense of the word. It is because this similar portrayal of adult women is censored, magazine editors use instead images of young girls on the cover, as a loophole from censorship to sell their magazines. The general public has no moral dilemma accepting the sexualization of young girls as a norm. For the artists, this presents a fascinating contradiction in light of the ongoing battle between religious beliefs and pop culture. |
