| The depictions of bodily perfection in the classical goddesses have a simplistic purity as well as a romanticised idealism. They show their subjects as almost inhuman – as mythical immortals. Stylistically Slight Wounds references this, in its light and composition. However these women depicted are not goddesses. The subjects are, to use the vernacular, ‘real women’, with their scars, stretches, bruises and cracks there in detail to be seen by all. The detachment of the sitters’ heads and faces emphasizes this, removing our capacity for relation or empathy, giving us no option but to scrutinize and find beauty in the body as an object. Somehow this also reveals some essence of their character in a way a portrait would only obscure. Although perhaps unconventional, the images undeniably seek beauty, but this beauty is to be found in imperfection and more importantly the truth. |
