How can the aesthetics of plant life and decay coexist with today's beauty standards?
Beauty shoould follow nature's logic.
Perfection is replaced with variation, asymmetry, and constant change. Nothing stays fixed. Color shifts with light, form shifts with movement, and it's exactly that temporality of aesthetics that defines beauty.
A rough or aged surface is not a flaw, it's proof of life. And when something reaches its end, it goes back into the ground and feeds whatever grows next. Death is part of that same beauty, because nothing lives without it.
Each piece is impermanent, meant to fade, fray, and decompose. Beauty, in this canon, is synonym of life.
If this canon had to be represented by a beauty queen, it would be Miss Canthus.
A grass-clothed icon, tall, thin and symmetrical, except for her two right arms, every proportion of her body pushed toward the ideal we're taught to chase, but covered in something that was always going to wilt.
Exhibition
Dutch Design Week 20205
Harvest of Dreams: Fibers of Renewal
WDKA x Nieuw Zwanenburg
Materials: Miscanthus Giganteus (Elephant Grass), Glycerine, Jute
Rings - Alyssa Merlini
Claws - Alyssa Merlini
Hair pin - Alyssa Merlini
Headppiece - Alyssa Merlini
Top - Augustė Sturlytė
Bag - Raquel Aparacio de la Vara
Skirt - Alyssa Merlini, Augustė Sturlytė