Squeeze into that Perfect Shell

A customer gazing into the seductive figure of a mannequin are unconciously transforming themself into the shape of that desired ideal, to become the stunning figure in the showcase under the gaze of many.

According to Lacan’s Mirror Stage, the strive of "self-becoming" starts from early age when we are trying to separate ourselves from the world around us by identifying with our body-  the alien shell which at the age allows identity to develop. And as a fundamental strive we goes into life to keep finding things that will "make us who we are".

Modern consumerism seems to provide endless identities-to-become, portraying transformations with the price of commodities. Yet it never fulfills, the inevitable disappointment with what we are and what we were promised to be always awaits. The perfect body of mannequins are always turning ever more perfect, yet the insatiable consumer is left with more void in this barren chase for ideal, craving for new and better version of selves to fulfill it.

Squeezing into that Perfect Shell......

The psychological “transformation” is reenacted in the process of making. 
I “flayed” myself and laminated the skin inside the shell of a mannequin. Comparing to how an ideal is easily and cleanly built whithin the mind, The tedious materializing gradually assumed a brutle nature.