To start off I’d like to apologize for the glare in the photo. If it’s hard to tell, this picture is about a woman standing with her back turned and she is covering her upper half. Everybody has insecurities. It’s something that people always deal with throughout their life. The bad thing about them is that we always keep them hidden. Nobody ever knows whether they’re going to hit a sensitive subject. It’s something that’s only talked about in secret by one person. This is what I see in Shelbi Schroeder’s art piece. It shows the insecurity viewed behind closed doors. It shows that there are some things that we want to try to change. It shows how our environment and media has affected us.
Before we get too into the concept of the art piece I’d just like to give a bit of information on Shelbi and her art. She is a student from UN Las Vegas. Her main medium of art looks to be photography. She uses the body as her subject in a lot of her art pieces. The idea of using the body gives her so many different opportunities/stories to tell. If you’d like to check out her other pieces you can find them at greaterlamfa.com/Glamfa2014/Schroeder_2014.html however, I’d just like to give a caution since her pieces should be handled maturely.
The media and the celebrities are mostly what cause our insecurities. With television in our daily lives we’re more likely to compare ourselves with that skinny, tall, and “perfect” model or celebrities. Since they are always the models for the clothing, makeup, and everything new, we believe that their appearance is what we should aim to be. This causes us to have doubt in our own appearance making us feel out of place. We’re constantly trying to become “ideal” since we have this concept of how “beauty” is.
However at the same time the theme of this piece could also be able just mainly on how beautiful the human body is. If we think about it our bodies started off from just an egg and sperm. It then formed a small body and as our life continuous it keeps growing. However at the same time it can magically go back to being small when we grow old. The body is something that we keep learning about as technology and tests continue to improve. This piece can actually go either way depending on how the critics analyze it.
Going back to the topic of insecurities I’d just like to tell anybody that’s reading this I just want to say: don’t worry about those “imperfections”, because those “imperfections” are what make us perfect. You don’t need to change anything about you.
Cynthia Carrera 