Julia Peirone - Make Up and Smile

About

The modern-day visual culture favors self-glorification and an obsession with abstract and hard-to-obtain ideals of beauty. Peirone explores and captures her protagonists‘ search for themselves and their sexuality while confronted by feelings of shame and vulnerability. Frustration plays a part too, as their annoyance at the societal standards and beauty ideals that are being imprinted on them and exaggerated in the photoshoots. 

Although the photographs are carefully staged, Peirone allows the model to move within the setting, capturing in-between moments, be they fragile or confident. She sees her subject and allows them to return their gaze. The artist is looking for the gap between reality and construction. Peirone’s oeuvre poses questions about the strengths and limitations of photographic images and the way we encounter ourselves in them.

For the series ‘Some like it hot’ (2022), Peirone was inspired by selfies posted on Instagram. She noticed similar poses and the same homogenous make-up looks were being posted on the app. Peirone asked girls to recreate the iconic look of Marilyn Monroe with the camera situated where a mirror would be. Captured in the intimate moments of ‘putting their face on‘, the girls consciously or unconsciously explore how classic signifiers of femininity – painted lips, long eyelashes – can be a mask to hide behind or to gain power through. The nontraditional portraits humanize the girls with their smeared lipstick and crooked eyelashes. 

The installation ‘Squeaky Stardust’ (2023) features both a video work as well as a series of polaroid-like images. A heavily made-up model can be seen slowly turning around with music playing in the background. Reminiscent of a ballerina in a music box, she circles around and around. A female voice can be heard saying ‘smile’ and the girl complies over and over again. The camera flashes capturing her grimacing, and her makeup smears when she tears up. The attention from the unseen photographer becomes distressing while a toy squeaks covering any vocal expression from the protagonist. 

Julia Peirone (*1973, Argentina) lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Her work has been shown extensively, most notably at solo exhibitions at Liljevalchs+ (2022), Kalmar Konstmuseum (2018), Göteborgs Konstmuseum (2017), and group exhibitions at Moderna Museet (2017), SE, Artipelag (2014), SE, Prague Triennale (2008), CZ and Museum of Photography, Helsinki (2005). UPCOMING: Solo exhibition, House of Sweden, Washington D.C., USA.