We are born and then we die, and yet as people, we spend our entire lives fearing death and clinging to our youth with all our might. We are sold the idea that if we prep, prime, cream, hydrate, tone, mist, enough, we can escape time, but ultimately that is untrue. The weight that beauty standards place on women is part of a bigger system that works itself into their understanding of themselves, in order to use shame as a means of self-repression. These notions are so ingrained in us that it’s hard to differentiate them from our sense of self. With this, self-reflection becomes not only a practice of introspection but also a means of liberation, to detach what in our identity is truly us and what is imposed as a part of a system of oppression. While deconstructing this on a personal level can secure individual liberation, having the vulnerability to do so publicly either during or in retrospect can lead to larger waves of change and help us accept these challenges as systemic experiences rather than individual faults.

Life, Death and a Little Bit of Eye Cream addresses the futility of the overconsumption of beauty products in the face of the inevitable approach of death and explores the notion of self reflection as a means of deconstruction, and vulnerability as an agent of change through a variety of media from print to textile.