# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
The word corset is a diminutive of the Old French word cors (meaning "body", and itself derived from the Latin corpus): the word therefore means "little body". 

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Much of Xu’s work is inspired by the Rococo period of painting. From the french revolution onward, the period was seen as void, lavish and corrupt. 

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
All genuine corsets have laces; if it doesn't have laces, it's not a corset! The grommets are there to protect the laces from ripping right through the fabric 

# data[].attributes.body
A corset is a support garment commonly worn to hold and train the torso into a desired shape, traditionally a smaller waist or larger bottom, for aesthetic or medical purposes (either for the duration of wearing it or with a more lasting effect), or support the breasts.

# data[].attributes.body
Women were often laced so tightly their breathing was restricted leading to faintness. Compressing the abdominal organs could cause poor digestion and over time the back muscles could atrophy. In fact, long term tight lacing led to the rib cage becoming deformed.

# data[].attributes.body
Exhibition explores nations of beauty across time and cultures.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
‘High-frequency apparatus with 3 electrotherapy electrodes’ Unknown Maker, 1930, Germany

# data[].attributes.headline
High-frequency apparatus with 3 electrotherapy electrodes

# data[].attributes.subject
High-frequency apparatus with 3 electrotherapy electrodes

# data[].attributes.body
Electrotherapy which targets the prevention of pimples and wrinkles was first introduced to treat tuberculosis. Oxygen therapy which promotes youthful-looking skin was first used for asthma treatment. These devices along with many others were redesigned and rescaled, firstly to introduce them into salons and then into domestic spaces.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
6 images and quotes from makeupbrutalism

# data[].attributes.body
Because of all the cosmetic services like skin whitening and hair bleaching - there is a lot of people that can change their appearance without surgery. This is quite common in Thailand, Korea and Japan

# data[].attributes.body
François Nars

“To me, the essence of truly modern makeup is the freedom to be yourself to express who you are“

# data[].attributes.body
The artist matches pixels from the nose of each subject to a Pantone colour that forms the background

# data[].attributes.body
Writer and activist Poorna Bell said…

"It doesn't do enough to make reparations for the untold mental and emotional damage done by colourism," a prejudice or discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, often among people of the same ethnic group.

# data[].attributes.body
This is a wax model of a female head depicting life and death. One side shows a beautiful woman; the other shows the head exposed as a skull and with worms and snails on and around it. The head is mounted on a base which has an inscription attached.

Vanitas are works of art intended to remind the viewer of the shortness of human life, the uselessness of vanity and the certainty of death. This example features many symbols typical for this type of object, such as a skull and insects that feast on decaying flesh.

Materials: Cloth and wax

Words and Quotes: Life and death, Shortness of beauty

# data[].attributes.body
The device promotes preserving your youthful skin and its use was encouraged in the past to keep your place in society.

# data[].attributes.body
Makeupbrutalism’s multimedia installation ‘It makes no sense being beautiful if no one else is ugly’ encourages us to question our beliefs, confront our raw selves beneath social pressure and to peel back the layers of the beauty industry.

# data[].attributes.body
Physiognomy - interpreting a person's character

through their racial reatures - has been practised in different cultures across time. When this German compendium was published. phsioanom was widely accepted in Europe, even taught at universitv Chinese physiognomic face-reading similarly linked beauty with good character and fortune (not to be mistaken with medical face-reading that correlates features with symptoms).

Our brains are optimised to read faces. Evolutionists believe that being able to extract information through facial cues is key to survival. But the process can produce huge biases and inaccuracies - beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

# data[].attributes.body
Made in 500 BCE, (reproduced by, Brucciani & Co. London) It's a sculpture depicting the goddess of love and beauty; Venus, without any clothes.

It gives an insight/idea of the beauty standard at the time, which is to be eternally youthful, pure/hairless.

# data[].attributes.body
Dubbed the “Hottentot Venus,” Baartman became a freak show attraction, paraded at human zoos, circus sideshows, museums and other public places. White Europeans were fascinated by her large black buttocks, breasts and genitalia. Often, she was molested.

# data[].attributes.body
The Black Morphew is a skin lotion said to turn dark scars silver, made by mixing Pelican gall bladders with wine under heat. The sculpture reveals the alternative digital reality SPECTRA make-up creates.

The SPECTRA eye pigment changes colour on camera, playing with the boundary between physical and digital reality.

# data[].attributes.body
Salvador Dali 'Bird-in-hand' compact.

Elgin American, designed by Salvador Dali 1950s, US

Gold-plated metal, mirror glass

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Old woman at the mirror                           Jeremiazs Falack, after Bernardo Stozzi 

# data[].attributes.body
A corset compresses the abdominal organs which could cause poor digestion and over time the back muscles could atrophy. In fact, long term tight lacing led to the rib cage becoming deformed. The Hunterian Museum has an example of a rib cage showing damage caused by tight lacing.

# data[].attributes.body
in India and Japan, precolonial ideals about light skin were linked to ideas about status and/or spiritual purity. In many other cultures such as Nigeria, privileging light skin arrived with European domination via slavery, colonialism and globalisation.

In 2021, the skin lightening industry was valued at US $9.96 billion.

Economic advantages are often skewed towards lighter skinned people.

The preference for lighter skin also operates interpersonally. In terms of favouritism and desirability

# data[].attributes.body
Beauty patches - or mouches (French for 'flies) - were commonly worn by men and women in Europe by the 1640s. Originally, they strategically covered smallpox or syphilis scars. Sex workers wore them to attract clientele. By the late 17th and into the 18th century, they had become elite fashion accessories, worn to enhance the radiance and whiteness of skin. There were social codes: where you wore your mouche could suggest anything from flirtation to political allegiance. The fashion for beauty patches waned with the invention of the smallpox vaccine in 1796, returning in the early 20th century as a popular fancy-dress accessory.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Old woman at the mirror                           Jeremiazs Falack, after Bernardo Stozzi 

# data[].attributes.body
European visual culture has historically linked aging in women with diminishing beauty by juxtaposing their maturing features with symbols of youthfulness and fertility, such as fresh blooms and feathers. This tacit connection between 'reproductive value' and attractiveness continues today.

The intended message of this imagery was likely to mock the central figure as a 'lustful old woman', inappropriately concerned with her appearance. However, we can alternatively read it as a self-assured woman taking pleasure in the beauty of her post-menopausal body.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
Old woman at the mirror                Jeremiazs Falack, after Bernardo Stozzi 

# data[].attributes.body
The flowers held by the old woman represent the idea that everything in life is temporary and subject to decline or change. Just as flowers eventually wither and fade away, so do all things in life. It's a symbolic way of expressing the concept that nothing lasts forever, and everything goes through a process of decay or impermanence.