A Room Of One's Own (2022)
In the photographic series "A Room Of One's Own", Anqi Li examines current ideals of beauty and their connections to neoliberal transformation processes that turn people into entrepreneurs of both their own selves and their bodies. Permanent optimization efforts are aimed at body-related self-maximization. But what power mechanisms are behind the ideals of beauty? The artist references Virginia Woolf's 1929 emancipatory essay "A Room to Herself". Anqi Li uses the techniques of advertising photography to create a fictional scenario that shows the protagonist torn between self-determination and repression. Broken glasses repaired with the help of a frame appear repeatedly in the series - an image that the artist contrasts with exaggerated notions of beauty. In the photographic series "A Room Of One's Own", Anqi Li examines current ideals of beauty and their connections to neoliberal transformation processes that turn people into entrepreneurs of both their own selves and their bodies. Permanent optimization efforts are aimed at body-related self-maximization. But what power mechanisms are behind the ideals of beauty? The artist references Virginia Woolf's 1929 emancipatory essay "A Room to Herself". Anqi Li uses the techniques of advertising photography to create a fictional scenario that shows the protagonist torn between self-determination and repression. Broken glasses repaired with the help of a frame appear repeatedly in the series - an image that the artist contrasts with exaggerated notions of beauty.
In the photographic series "A Room Of One's Own", Anqi Li examines current ideals of beauty and their connections to neoliberal transformation processes that turn people into entrepreneurs of both their own selves and their bodies. Permanent optimization efforts are aimed at body-related self-maximization. But what power mechanisms are behind the ideals of beauty? The artist references Virginia Woolf's 1929 emancipatory essay "A Room to Herself". Anqi Li uses the techniques of advertising photography to create a fictional scenario that shows the protagonist torn between self-determination and repression. Broken glasses repaired with the help of a frame appear repeatedly in the series - an image that the artist contrasts with exaggerated notions of beauty. In the photographic series "A Room Of One's Own", Anqi Li examines current ideals of beauty and their connections to neoliberal transformation processes that turn people into entrepreneurs of both their own selves and their bodies. Permanent optimization efforts are aimed at body-related self-maximization. But what power mechanisms are behind the ideals of beauty? The artist references Virginia Woolf's 1929 emancipatory essay "A Room to Herself". Anqi Li uses the techniques of advertising photography to create a fictional scenario that shows the protagonist torn between self-determination and repression. Broken glasses repaired with the help of a frame appear repeatedly in the series - an image that the artist contrasts with exaggerated notions of beauty.
@HFBK Hamburg ICAT Gallery, 2024