The Face Behind the Face is a solo exhibition by Su Yang, featuring a series of huge surreal oil paintings and small traditional egg tempera paintings of women’s faces.

Su Yang's studio projects aim to investigate the ideologies that encourage many young Chinese women to undergo unnecessary, even harmful non-therapeutic cosmetic surgeries to alter their appearance in order to conform to dominant standards of female beauty ideals.

Cosmetic surgery has been a controversial topic among feminist debates. One group believes it is a way for women to transcend and/or transform female embodiment.

In her work, Yang poses questions about the identity of women who do not have any of their personal features after cosmetic surgeries and instead, take on the same features as internet celebrities.

These works present the visible impulse to these invisible ideologies that have begun to change women’s bodies. They are also conceived with the desensitized nature of cosmetic surgery and the subsequent traumas. 

The Face Behind the Face is on at Black Cat Gallery in Collingwood.

The exhibition opens from 6pm - 8pm on 7 January, and is on until 17 January, 2021.