At some point in the past, someone set a standard of beauty as the only one that is acceptable. Unfaltering bodies that do not truly exist in real life — and if anything swayed from that standard, it was labelled, very easily, as an imperfection. However, at the end of the day, isn’t everything that exists on this planet simply a creation of nature?
26-year-old artist Ashima Raizada would likely agree. Her ongoing series ‘Physical Implications Of Oneness’ portrays her body in all its natural glory. It is an attempt to not only demolish the ‘the outdated standards of beauty’, but also a way to appreciate nature as something that exists outside of us, but is also tied with our individual existence. She explains, “The theme investigates the apparent dissimilarity but an underlying sameness between the images combined, further extending its scope and not confining to the body and its politics.”
In the photoseries, parts of her body are juxtaposed with various elements of nature to highlight that the idea of beauty is always shifting. It’s almost as if she emphasises that each perceived ‘imperfection’ that exists in one’s body was always meant to be there. But who ever defined the idea of perfection in the first place?
Coming to the realisation that beauty does not solely convey itself in physical forms, Ashima was able to aptly capture nature’s different forms of manifestations. “Photographing different parts of my body and ‘seeing things as they are’ helped me navigate through the prejudices of borrowed perspectives. The visual associations bring together the internal and external and how changing certain attributes can alter one’s ways of looking,” she says.
Our lifelong, boundless hunt for perfection eats up way more of our desires, energy, and passion than we can imagine. Instead, as conveyed through Ashima’s diptychs, why not place the same focus on accepting and appreciating our most natural selves?
Find Ashima here.
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