In The Seduction of Suffering, I explore the unsettling yet pervasive depiction of female corpses in fashion advertising. By placing these figures within abstract landscapes punctuated by oceanic symbols—evoking themes of capturment, consumption, and disposability—I heighten the sensation of ‘convulsive beauty,’ a surrealist paradox where attraction and disturbance coalesce. The large scale of my work disrupts the passive consumption of imagery that sensationalizes violence against women, exposing how the media constructs narratives around femininity, power, and spectacle.
Influenced by fashion photographers like Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton, Steven Meisel, and Chris von Wangenheim, I examine how their voyeuristic capture of the female corpse has shaped my perception of beauty. Womanhood, as filtered through the male gaze, often equates dominance with female passivity, transporting the body beyond the eroticism of the living to the fetishism of the inanimate. This metamorphosis —from living to dead, human to object—creates a profound dissonance that both disturbs and enthralls me.
