The Perfect Human
Ketevan Kirvalidze
The Perfect Human is a pseudo-scientific analysis of beauty standards, gender norms, and social conventions. To document the cues expressed through body language or dress styles, I photographed myself in a series of staged scenarios. These studies were divided into three sections of the book: “Proportions” evaluates how certain aspects of physiognomy are interpreted by society, “Body Language” breaks down the subconscious signals we transmit through gesture, and “Modes of Dress” examines what we communicate with our choice of clothes.
In this satirical project, I use my body as a living sign. I want to reveal our elaborate performances and the arbitrariness of these displays.
“The self, as a performed character, is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, and to die; it is a dramatic effect arising diffusely from a scene that is presented, and the characteristic issue, the crucial concern, is whether it will be credited or discredited.”
— Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life