Body Embellishment

Body Embellishment explores the most innovative artistic expression in the 21^st-century international arenas of body extension, augmentation, and modification. The areas of focus are jewelry, tattoos, nail arts, and fashion. Avant-garde jewelry consciously engages the body by intersecting and expanding the planes of the human form. Tattoos are at once on and in the body. Nail art, from manicures to pedicures, has humble origins, yet today is a discipline undergoing a great artistic resurgence. Select fashion alters or distorts the architecture of the body. The juxtaposition of these varied forms, deriving from popular culture as well as the worlds of art, craft, and design, bring to light the visual and conceptual parallels among them. The exhibition’s underlying premise is that examining collectively these most extreme and avant-garde forms of body art will illuminate the cultural meaning of body embellishment in general.