Bazaaro
Benton's Bazaaro started with the creation of a mock woman's magazine filled with satirical articles and commentary on the way women are portrayed in the media. It has since progressed to become an entire campaign about gender images in the media, complete with fake advertisements that were on display at the Gallery at Market East in Center City Philadelphia, January 2012. Each advertisement led the viewer to a website designed and created by AB: www.bazaaroworld.net . Bazaaro World exposes how print advertisements and images in the media are used to perpetuate gender stereotypes and impose unattainable standards on the female gender.
Please check out the links below to find out more about Bazaaro World, and how you can detect and dissect images in the media.
Benton's Bazaaro is a mock woman's magazine filled with satirical articles
and commentary on the way women are portrayed in the media.
The media is a central element of modern life, and gender and sexuality remain at the core of how we think about our identities. With the media containing so many images and messages about men, women, and sexuality, it is unlikely that these ideas would have no impact on our own sense of identity. People consume hours of television, flip through magazines, surf the net, pass billboards, go to the movies, and are generally unable to avoid popular culture and advertising. There is an overwhelming amount of information going into peoples heads. Even if they dont see it as information, or say theyre not paying attention to it, even if they are able to criticize it, and are aware that it is constructed fiction, they are unable to escape the influence of its content. Bazaaro Magazine highlights these contradictions and points to the absurdity of a culture that we ourselves have created and simultaneously undermine. As opposed to traditional advertising and media efforts, this work provokes the viewer to pause and think, rather than blindly consume.
This piece gained a bit of attention while it was being exhibited in an alumni show at Houghton College. Several articles were published in the college newspaper which you can read in the links below.
Bazaaro: Seeking Conversation, not Coercion
The Curious Case of Benton's Bazaaro
Bazaaro Art Piece Sparks Controversy
Panel Discusses: 'Art That Confronts'
Bazaaro: Responding to Misconceptions, and Bringing Clarity to Confusion
AB was a recipient of the September 2011 cycle for the Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant. Her project, Bazaaro World, exposes how print advertisements and images in the media are used to perpetuate gender stereotypes and impose unattainable standards on the female gender through public art. She created three mall displays in the Gallery at Market East in addition to a website. All of the pieces reference the way that women are portrayed in the media and describe the absurdity of a culture that we allow and ignore. As opposed to traditional advertising efforts, her work provokes the viewer to pause and think, rather than accept and consume. BazaaoWorld.net is an educational resource that raises awareness for both the campaign and the overarching issue of gender advertisements.
Bazaaroworld.net is centered on the way women are represented in the media and focuses specifically on print advertisements. Its goal is to promote a greater awareness of the relationship between the female gender (and related issues like sexuality, race, psychology, etc) and advertising.
Any and every image that you see in the media is highly manipulated and constructed to give a very specific message. This site will reveal how these images are constructed and altered to change the viewer’s perception of what is real, beautiful, and feminine.
The intent of the sight is to highlight the fact that advertisers think their consumers are stupid enough to believe they’re selling a pair of jeans when they show us a skinny girl laying on the grass in an erotic position. They’re not selling us jeans; they’re selling us sex. They’re selling us a contrived idea of what is beautiful, popular, and real.
Are there objective standards of beauty? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Must art be beautiful to be great art? What is the role of the experience of beauty in a good life?
This book questions the notion of beauty, and how others have defined and valued this concept in their lives. Participants were asked to write or draw their response to the question "What is Beauty?" on a postcard. The intent was to explore the meaning, implication, and value of beauty.
All of the original postcards are kept in clamshell box made by AB and a book was published and reproduced. The book is 125 full color, perfect bound pages, 5.83"x 8.26" and contains every postcard that was received throughout the project. You can purchase the book online at lulu.com
See all of the postcards at:
I find our society and the people who live in it to be highly amusing; the things we do and say to each other for political and monetary gains are peculiar and at times, baffling. This project was instigated by the nation's gossip of the depreciating value of the U.S dollar; it is meant to question the behaviors of humanity and why we do what we do.
At its most basic level, a dollar bill is nothing but a piece of paper; it is worthless. It used to be that our dollar was backed by stable commodities such as gold and silver. However, we have surpassed that precedent, and live off of a fiat system which encourages our society to live beyond its means. What gives these things, these pieces of paper, any worth is the value we attribute to them. It is the belief that they are worth something that gives them their value.
My intention for the project was to exploit the absurdity of this system and the idea that somehow our dollar is worth less when it was always worthless to begin with. The original context for the dollar bills that I created were to be crumpled up and tossed around the city, however, after a few short weeks the operation had to be shut down when someone actually tried to use one of my fake dollar bills. Instead I've resorted to framing the pieces along side photo-documentation of the project and placing them in a traditional gallery setting.
