This work is a continuation of Papadimitriou’s ironic and humorous takes on contemporary images of female beauty as imposed by fashion magazines, news tabloids and television. Contemporaneous with her Vogue magazine covers, Papadimitriou cropped the lavish and sensual lips from photographs of supermodels and placed them on the backs of dummies. These dummies lay around the artist’s house for the sole practical purpose of helping her pacify the urge to smoke. In an attempt to derive humor from a serious undertaking, she removed the small hoops with which the dummies are propped up and pasted on these lavishly “feminine” female lips. She then took three passport-sized self-portraits and then blew these up to A3 size.

In choosing the word “dummy” as a title, Papadimitriou intentionally co-opted the chiefly American expression term for a “foolish” into a visual equation. Humor emerges as the viewer is confronted with the incongruous juxtaposition of incompatible contexts; she stands before the camera un-groomed as these embellished lips border the absurd and ridiculous.

Maria Halkias