Freud, Art & Body Image

Our A Level artists worked with the nearby Freud Museum on a project exploring body image, the theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week.

Working with Emilia Raczkowska, Education and Outreach at the Freud Museum, the Lower Sixth Art students were asked to reflect on how they think and feel about their bodies.  In response they produced the work ‘Will you ever be perfect enough for yourself?’ currently installed in the museum. One of the students writes about the experience:

‘We were tasked with creating an art piece centering around the theme of body positivity. After much deliberation, we decided to make a collaborative piece based on the issues we have with our own bodies. We all chose a number of supposed physical flaws we believe we possess, and decided to represent them on 15cm x 15cm squares in any media we wished. In doing so, these supposed flaws, which we usually treat with distaste, were transformed into something valuable, as we gave time and effort to portraying them.

Our representations were combined in one big piece in a format which echoes someone’s Instagram feed. This further links to the theme of body positivity, as social media, such as Instagram, can often be damaging to an individual’s self esteem, as it typically consists of photos of the best aspects of someone’s life. In our piece, we inverted this: instead of presenting what we view as the most attractive parts of our body, we showed the most unappealing aspects to the world, demonstrating a vulnerability seldom seen on social media. In addition, we also considered the fact that women are often put into boxes (or labelled) based on their physical appearance – as such, we used the square, or box shape, in our work. 

Ultimately, with our piece, ‘Will you ever be perfect enough for yourself?’ (a title which links to the high standards of physical beauty that women often hold themselves up to), we hope to demonstrate to the viewers that what they may view as their physical flaws are not something to be detested, but rather to be celebrated.’ 

Sophia, Lower Sixth