Abstract
This practice-based research investigates how parody and collage can expose and subvert
idealised representations of women in contemporary visual media. Drawing on feminist art
theory and visual culture studies, the study examines how beauty standards are produced,
maintained, and naturalised through fashion imagery’s apparatus of pose construction, digital
manipulation, and editorial curation. Emerging from my professional experience within
South Africa’s magazine industry, where I have contributed to perpetuating idealised beauty
norms, this research positions my artistic practice as a site of intervention and critique.
Through three interconnected media, sculpture, digital collage, and video, I materialise the
hidden labour and structural constraints that fashion imagery systematically conceals.
Situating this practice within feminist art discourse, I engage with artists Allison Zuckerman
and Wangechi Mutu, whose deployment of collage and parody informs my methodology.
However, my work diverges through its specific focus on fashion photography and the
integration of AI-generated imagery within feminist critique. The study contributes to
feminist art practice by developing a methodology that repositions the pose as a site of
ideological inscription and explores how beauty ideals operate through possession of the
body, image, and gaze. By intervening in representational systems from within, the research
offers an insider critique of fashion photography’s methodology. The body of work
challenges the aesthetics of perfection and reveals the mechanisms through which
contemporary visual culture continues to produce and regulate idealised femininity