Shibui
Shibui is a Japanese word for the beauty that only comes with age. The word is used for the beauty that only time can reveal or the impression one gets from looking at the face of a certain kind of older person. English has no equivalent word because this concept is not valued in a society that worships youth. The women we want to see, according to current media research, start at pre-pubescent and range in age to thirty-nine, when most women come to the end of child bearing years. Although culture objectifies them, celebrating them through a primary focus on their body parts and a standardized beauty (however artificial it may be), these women are often cast aside as obsolete or invisible at the advent of “middle age.”
By contrast, I am exploring the shibui of women in mid-life. They have become the unwitting “other” in a culture where it has become an anathema to age or to allow yourself to appear to be aging. Standing in opposition to this notion, my work invents images of ordinary women, neither costumed nor armored, but conveying a confident personhood and an ease with themselves that demands respect. Women such as these resist cultural expectations and refuse the heroic measures of surgical augmentation, choosing instead to live into the second half of life at deeper levels. Can we find a new way of seeing that transcends current ideals? Can we accept aging, even admire it, and finally enjoy it?
By the sheer size and vibrant palettes of the work, and by their direct gaze at the viewer, these women cannot be ignored. They are made visible, seen again as role models, rich with the patina and character that comes only with age and a life well lived.