GALLERY FIVE20

Showing in Gallery Five20: Face It, Girls | Libby Newell

As a women we are bombarded with images of fast fashion and the most recent beauty trends. These images and accompanying messages imply to women that we are not enough as we are and that we do not own enough already. There is always a new trend and an updated shopping list to keep us "relevant," "attractive," and "desirable." 

By transforming fashion and beauty magazine pages into objects that question the need to add products to our faces and our closets, this work affirms the inherent value and dignity of the women these products are marketed to. Fast fashion devalues not only the consumer, however, but also the people whose hands assemble these garments and products, the overwhelming majority of whom are women. The inhumane working conditions these factory workers experience are driven by an insatiable demand for cheap labor to fuel both low cost fast fashion and high end luxury goods.  

Libby uses slow, thoughtful, sometimes painful processes to make works of art in the hope that viewers will slow down enough to consider rather than consume.