Fever Dreams: The Cult of Beauty at Wellcome Collection by Nastia Svarevska
What did you want to be when you were a child?
At thirteen, I was determined to be beautiful, a resolution I penned in a recently excavated diary at my family home. The steps toward this goal were clear: lose 10 kilograms, get a smaller waist, and develop six-pack abs. As a result of the environment I grew up in, my thoughts were consumed solely by the relentless pursuit of what I perceived as beauty, having little consideration for my health and well-being. The success of this endeavour hinged primarily on my appeal to a male audience.
Over a decade later, my perception of beauty has evolved; I now recognise it as a social construct. Yet, I still find myself an occasional prisoner of these oppressive, toxic thoughts and ideals deeply ingrained in my psyche – and our systems: a struggle explored by the current exhibition at Wellcome Collection in London, titled The Cult of Beauty (26 October 2023 – 28 April 2024). Accompanied by the book I wish I could present to my younger self, Disobedient Bodies: Reclaim Your Unruly Beauty by writer and broadcaster Emma Dabiri, the show offers an alternative perspective, prompting introspection on the very essence of what it means to be beautiful and how we can do it differently.
According to Dabiri, a crucial place to start is to “recognise that the attention focused on our bodies – particularly female bodies – is accompanied by a deeply entrenched [individual and collective] contempt for them and that this is the result of specific cultural, philosophical and religious legacies.” The exhibition traces these roots: it showcases historical objects dating back to as early as 1000–100 BCE, up to contemporary artworks and artefacts. Many of them underscore the nexus between beauty standards and colonialism, patriarchy, and capitalism, the systems which commodify and exploit beauty for their gain, as evidenced by the alarming worldwide expansion of the beauty industry.
12 Reasons You’re Tired All the Time by Juno Calypso, 2013. Courtesy the artist and TJ Boulting; © Juno Calypso
Similar to the exploration of beauty in Western philosophy by the likes of Plato, Kant, and Nietzsche – a theme often regarded as one of the most controversial – the exhibition is too complex to grasp all at once. It surpasses Western standards by addressing diverse races, genders, ages and social statuses, illustrating how the quest for beauty isn’t a recent phenomenon confined to specific demographics. Instead, it reveals that notions of beauty have impacted various communities and have continually swung from one extreme to another like a Foucault pendulum. Likewise, I find myself oscillating between feelings of solace and solidarity, followed by moments of anger and distress as I navigate the exhibition space adorned in shades of baby pink.
Sometimes, it feels like a fever dream. I encounter a 1650 German engraving depicting husbands bringing their ugly wives to a windmill for grinding into beautiful women (if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry), a life-size Barbie by Adel Rootstein Ltd. with the unattainable body proportions hauntingly hovering above me in an almost Lynchian manner, or a towering structure crafted from her late mother’s belongings by an anonymous New York-based artist Narcissister, with familiar items like a hairbrush, reading glasses, and necklaces suspended in the air with a rather eerie presence.
(Almost) all of my dead mother’s beautiful things by Narcissister. Installation view at ‘The Cult of Beauty’ at the Wellcome Collection in 2023. Photo: © Benjamin Gilbert; © the artist
“This sculpture crystallises the processes of anger, grief, reconciliation and celebration the artist has gone through as she grew to embrace her own unique beauty and identity,” reveals Janice Lee, the exhibition curator. The assertion of beauty and self-expression, irrespective of social, cultural, and familial expectations, hits close to home and resonates with the overarching theme in other artworks in the show.
Take, for instance, ‘Perhaps We Are All Fictions in the Eye of the Beholder’ by a London-based artist of East Asian/Chinese heritage, Xu Yang, a self-portrait in the style of the French court artist Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun that highlights the liberation discovered within contemporary drag culture and reflects the journey of self-acceptance. Or ‘Unwrapping (Hope springs eternal)’ by another London-based artist, Victoria Cantons, a self-portrait depicting a trans woman after facial feminisation surgery, speaking to the process of self-realisation. Cantons raises the timeless question: “Is there an idea of what a woman ‘should’ look like?” and if so, who decides?
Perhaps We Are All Fictions in the Eye of the Beholder by Xu Yang, 2021. © the artist
In her research project and photographic series ‘The Disobedient Nose’, Shirin Fathi responds by emphasising the significance of personal agency, particularly for those privileged to make choices. With her native country, Iran, leading globally in rhinoplasty surgeries, her work stands as a beacon of defiance, a testament to the resilience of women against societal pressures and biases. “My hope is that this project gives back a sense of agency to the viewer when it comes to deciding what is beautiful in bodies,” Fathi asserts, offering a glimpse into the power of autonomy.
Self-portraiture is a powerful medium for affirming individual identity and challenging conventional beauty standards. Yet, it also holds the potential to reinforce and perpetuate them, particularly in the contemporary era of heavily edited selfies (never did I imagine seeing an autobiography that consists solely of selfies, as in Kim Kardashian’s Selfish). The exhibition, therefore, resonates with the zeitgeist, where even the notion of self-care has shifted towards what is now termed selfie-care.
The Disobedient Nose by Shirin Fathi, 2022. Photograph: © Shirin Fathi
How do we break free from the grip of these standards? In our quest for beauty, liberation lies in acknowledging our ability to define beauty for ourselves. As long as it doesn’t harm or compromise our well-being, there’s no definitive right or wrong; it’s about finding fulfilment, joy, and pleasure on our terms, regardless of what it looks like on any given day. To further the metaphor, if we join the 'cult of beauty', we must set our own guidelines. Ultimately, true beauty resides in self-expression and acceptance, despite the external voices and forces that seek to dictate our worth based solely on physical appearance.
As I leave the exhibition, Dabiri's words linger in my mind, evoking a sense of hope for the future: “When beauty transcends its shallow physical confines, it possesses the potential to be a source of profound pleasure and transformation – capable of reshaping the world.”