Naomi Frank
I’m interested in the relationship between object and value, especially as it relates to traditional ideas of femininity and beauty. The portrait series explores theatricality, identity, and the commodification of women's beauty. They are beautifully dressed and made up, but their facial expressions imply their lack of interest in being the subject of anyone's gaze. The bright colors of their features become dreamlike and flattened through the heightened colors of the image, as if glimpsed a hallucination or a memory. The still lives are an examination of the tension between imitation. and its associated lack of value, and reality, where the acquisition of both real jewels and real butterflies involves an act of violence. The formation of identity implies a destruction of unwanted aspects of the self, just as the conquests and accomplishments of humanity so often come at the cost of what is considered to be the natural state of the world. But this is a false dichotomy, setting ourselves apart from our environment when actually we are just another cog in the engine of creation.