Olga Migliaressi-Phoca creates narratives that reflect popular culture of today and echo current viewpoints and attitudes of western society. In her text-based works, she turns iconic logos and familiar signs of everyday vocabulary into thought-provoking plays of words and reflections of gender, identity, visual representation, and the interplay between subject and object. Recognizable, familiar signs that have become a mundane part of everyday vocabulary become transformed into a novel narrative.
The presented works stem from the ongoing series “The Future Is Vague”. Each work presents a cover beauty issue of the fictitious Vague magazine in a specific country. The works touch upon matters of gender identity and (in)equality and examine the position of women in today’s society by exploring the different stereotypes of female beauty standards around the world, offering a commentary on society’s expectations of women and the burdening, often unrealistic, and barely achievable cliches they have to adhere to. The works are based on google searches regarding beauty standards in each country, or what is most commonly a female beauty stereotype regarding specific countries in an effort to unify cultural boundaries. Following in the genre of portrait painting, the mirror works show stylized representations of body parts based on notepad scribbles that are characterized by a childlike simplicity of freehand manipulation. To make her mirror works, the artist employs professional glass techniques, creating a new patina across each mirrored panel using acids before scratching and engraving the glass to paint the iconography. Migliaressi-Phoca uses the mirror as canvas, manipulating and “vandalizing” its surface to create compelling narratives. The reflective surface, believed to reveal and uphold truths, manages to bring the viewers into the spotlight and, by challenging their perspectives, encourages them to reflect upon their own stance and become active participants in the dialogue.