Hyper-Consumerist Identity

‘Hyper-consumerist Identity' explores the impact of a materialistic contemporary society, leading to the obliteration of individual thought and of the construction of individual identity. Our cultural identity is being shadowed by a constant feeding and indoctrination by advertising propaganda as authoritarian transmission of messages, rendering the public into a passive receiver of consumer messages, resulting in the illusion of desire for material possessions. We are becoming identified by our possessions in this reevaluation of what identity has become. We are rendered ‘naked’ when stripped of our material world. Succumbing to overconsumption we are diminishing our intellectual evolution, glorifying physical appearance over intelligence. This project visualises mass consumption as a form of religion, prioritising consumerism as primary ideology. The outcome of the project conveys the fetishisation of commodities resulting in the ‘packaging’ and suffocation of oneself with materials. Make-up is translated into coating oneself with what is a symbol of consumerist culture, shaping our appearance by beauty ideals, obscuring our natural identity. Plastic wrap is used in self-suffocation, considering its emergence as a primary material in production, which in its overproduction, is suffocating the consumer. The model suffocates herself, leading to a deforming of her face, her identity and thus, her painted face, rendering that deformation a response to cultural deformation done by hyper-consumerism. Photography is used as a protest for the status-quo of prevalence of over-consumption as the primary identity of a globalised cultural world. The display of the piece as a grid shows the connectivity of the series and the materiality of consumption brought with the loose display of the photographs. The last part of paper receipts wishes to convey a complete obscuration of the self by materialism, when the tearing of the receipts alongside the ripping of plastic wrap represents, the liberation from consumerism, the breathing point after materialistic suffocation - the catharsis of the performance and the emerging of one’s liberated identity.