ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Veronica Posada (2001) is a Colombian artist based in New York City. From a young age, the artist showed an interest in the making of objects and enrolled in various woodworking, crafting, knitting and art classes. Throughout her high school years she attended an art workshop that allowed her to develop ideas and exercise her creativity. However, the workshop and high school art classes were not providing her enough technical skills to render the complex drawings that she had in mind. In summer of 2019, Posada was accepted to the Brown University Drawing Intensive Course which seriously advanced her academic drawing skills. During her time at Brown, she became specifically intrigued with charcoal, and continued to use that as her primary medium. In 2020 she started her BFA in drawing at Pratt institute in Brooklyn. During the beginning of the program, the artist developed her previous ideas about art practices and the creative process through portraits of different artists. Recently, she moved away from that concept and became intertwined with more personal issues. Her recent work is concerned with society's pursuit of beauty and her own obsession with achieving a perfect appearance. As Posada keeps digging deeper into her own experience and her views on this social issue, she hopes to bring a unique perspective and invite others to be critical about their relationship to the face and body.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I have a strange obsession with my appearance. It has always been there. Since I was two years old, I was opposed to wearing particular articles of clothing. I preferred to choose my own outfits and I was certainly not running around, getting my clothes dirty and wrinkled. I also started wearing makeup at a young age. Making my eyes look bigger with eyeshadow, changing the shape of my lips, making my cheeks look a little slimmer and getting rid of my dark circles.
The obsession then evolved. Slowly I started noticing the types of women in magazines and my friends started going on diets. Mostly those who got offered prices from their moms if they dropped weight. Slowly I started overspending on clothes and not loving the way they fitted me. Slowly I started taking more workout classes and eating less. I started pinching my belly fat and thinking about cutting it off. Slowly I started feeling uncomfortable with turning my head and letting someone see my nose from the side, and I started entertaining the idea of getting plastic surgery.
I kept fantasizing of looking severely malnourished, and taking one laxative after the other. In the process of recovery and self introspection I started to deal with the pain by making charcoal drawings that help me uncover what this obsession means. What has been the catalyst for it to grow this strong? What is its significance in my life and in society?
I take great care in rendering these images of garments, faces and bodies, expanding their size to ensure that every single detail is captured. This process of altering and composing the image is a reflection of the way I have treated myself for years - hyper fixating on defects and wasting countless hours trying to achieve an unattainable level of perfection. After I give up on perfecting the drawing, I pick some text to go over it. The text alludes to personal experience but somehow also nullifies my extreme effort to make the image beautiful. The juxtaposition between the delicate representation and the text imitates the way in which the media uses images of impossibly beautiful women to sell a lifestyle or idea.
Through the intense and often tedious process of developing these drawings, I find a sense of release from the guilt, self-doubt, and feelings of insufficiency that often plagues me. This meditative practice allows me to explore my own relationship with beauty and the ways in which it has shaped my perception of the world.
In my work, I aim to highlight the sources that perpetuate the societal aspiration for flawlessness, while simultaneously exploring this obsession on a personal level. I touch upon my experience with body dysmorphia, eating disorders, plastic surgery, the beauty and the fashion industry.
Ultimately, my work is an exploration of the complex and often contradictory nature of beauty, and the ways in which it intersects with our collective thoughts and experiences. Through my art I foster a greater understanding of these issues and encourage a more nuanced dialogue around the pursuit of perfection.