Make Me Beautiful

In China, over 10 million people have cosmetic surgeries each year. As it self-discipline on face gets more and more common, and cosmetic surgery becomes an increasingly resorted to measure for common people, I'm interested in the reasons and mechanism behind such zeal.

I went to different cosmetic surgeries for diagnoses, and asked the “beauty designers“ to write surgery plans for my face. Other than pointing out my "defects", they also volunteer to offer me different solutions according to my preference, letting me choose from the most popular types of faces like choosing products on a shelf - sounds like face is my only obstacle to those dream life. I smell my desire and weakness in front of the overwhelming consumerism culture.

Apart from cosmetic surgery diagnoses and photos I took of some cosmetic surgeries, I also collected pre-surgery portrait photos of the people who have already done cosmetic surgeries from cosmetic surgery specialty websites, removed watermarks added by the websites to return their original look, and cut patterns on the portraits with a knife, before attaching to each of them thoughts shared by people who have done cosmetic surgery in my own handwriting.These photos remind me of death masks, post-mortem photos, or perhaps all the photos - as the moment they are being made suggests the past and the lost. But there are more to these portraits: hope, insecurity, determination, farewell, secret…

The project is ongoing, and I wish I could eventually make a photobook out of it.