cross-posted from raincoaster
What causes art? In this case, it’s simple: a child’s desire for mutilation.
Do 13-year-olds really need to be saving their babysitting and paper route money for breast implants? Cheryl-Ann Webster wondered that herself, when her daughter told her that a friend was already socking away money for the boobflation job she felt would be an absolute necessity, sooner rather than later.
So Cheryl-Ann made a few synthetic boobs herself; she made The Beautiful Women Project.
To demonstrate that beautiful bodies come in all shapes and sizes, she wanted to surround young girls with sculptures of real women’s bodies…
The Beautiful Women Project is a touring art exhibition of life-sized torsos of real women aged 19-91.
Aims:
- To challenge socially-constructed images of beauty
- To raise awareness and open a dialogue about the link between self-worth and physical appearance
- To be a teaching and healing tool
In the artist’s words: “Our bodies tell our life story. They are portraits of our journeys and experiences. Knowing that our body is beautiful just as it exists, is a message more people need to see and hear.”
video over the jump.
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raincoaster media 
Doug
May 14, 2007
I have been a supporter of the BWP pretty much since it started — helping where ever and whenever I could. It’s been a fascinating process seeing the whole project from the outside. I can’t imagine what it was like from Cheryl-Ann’s perspective — creating the project took a couple of years and much money, and promoting and exhibiting it has more-or-less taken over her life.
It has also been interesting to see how different the project can appear in different venues. The lighting and gallery layout really affect the impact of the exhibit. The first gallery that showed the exhibit was in Kingston. The gallery had no natural light, but had very good artificial lighting for an art exhibit. As a result, it made for a very powerful and emotional display. A later exhibit was held in a gallery in VanKleek Hill that was originally a house. In that gallery, much of the light came through the windows. The result there was very much more airy. I think it was more beautiful, but much less forceful in its impact.
The exhibit is not currently on display, unfortunately. Cheryl-Ann has several possibilities in the pipe lines. As far as I know, all venues that are currently under consideration are here in Ontario. If you are near by when the project is on exhibit, it is well worth a visit.
raincoaster
May 14, 2007
Thanks for that. It’s true that the setting and lighting can bring out completely different aspects of an artwork, and that a good work of art has many different aspects to show. Until there’s another gallery show, I suppose we’ll make do with the video.
She should contact ArtStarts here in Vancouver: I’m not sure if it’s BC artist-specific, but it exists to put artists in contact with schoolchildren and tour with exhibits, even being “artist in residence” at a school. Given that they sent some people to Nunavut last year, I think they might have a bigger jurisdiction and they’d probably be interested in this.