Chicana Ways - Aletta

AnyBody's Concerns 6(2003)
constraints imposed on women by ideals of feminine beauty.
This applies to pieces of work focussing on the deconstruction
of cultural ideals of female beauty such as Orlan's operation
performances, which replace forces of "nature" by technology.
Some performances single out women's hair as a contestable
signifier of femininity: In Art must be beautiful, artists
must be beautiful (1975) Marina Abramovic kept combing her
hair until blood dripped from the metal comb. She herself
simply designated this piece of work as an exercise on the
idea of beauty (31), while Valie Export's feminist explanation
rings with more pathos: "In der Anpassung der Frau an das vom
Mann entworfene Schönheitsideal, mag es auch noch so tief
internalisiert sein, so daß es die Frau gar als ihr eigenes
Schönheitsideal erlebt, sickert bereits das Blut der
Selbstaufgabe, der Preisgabe der eigenen Identität" (149)
[Woman's adaption to ideals of beauty conceived by men, as
much as the woman may have internalised them and though she
may perceive them as her own ideals, always claims the blood
of self-renunciation, of giving up one's own identity"].
Rebecca Horn's thematically related video performance Mit zwei
Scheren gleichzeitig die Haare schneiden (1974/75) showed the
artist in frontal close-up, with a facial expression changing
between decision, fear, concentration and resilience (Voigt
21) and in a violently uncontrolled act of cutting her long
hair from left and right at the same time, without regard to
any kind of shape. The motif of cosmetic manicure as a
typically feminine concern is referred to by Valie Export in
http://www.genderforum.uni-koeln.de/anybody/gutenberg.html (38 van 60)31-3-2005 18:21:57