Maria Raquel Cochez

My work and investigations focus on the female existence within established concepts of beauty. Through a variety of media it discovers, exposes, and challenges aesthetic standards that create familiar archetypes, and presents visual realities that both invite and defy aesthetic expectations. My art records the damage that pervasive beauty canons and limited definitions of these create in a group and in an individual’s perception of body, beauty, and self-worth. It documents countervailing declarations of beauty and historical shifts in standards and their subjectivity. It explores a series of visual commonalities-aesthetic system.