Credit Smear

In this installation, what appear to be limbs are articulated, beginning to form a skeleton, crowned by a made-up face with blue eyes—an image overused by Western marketing of a certain era—unless it has other faces, multiplied. A damaged arm holds a hat, from which the hair of a blonde wig emerges. A handbag has fallen to the ground, torn apart under the weight of a cinder block. As you walk around the sculpture, the impression of being near a body fades, only to return a few steps further on. With this anthropomorphic structure, Lizzie Fitch tests the obviousness of our relationship to our bodies just as much as she highlights the artificiality of our perception and the cult of models and stereotypes. The biting irony of its title, which directly refers to notions of defilement and corruption, fuels what becomes a reflection on the contemporary status of authenticity; its pitfalls and vertigos, but also its necessity. The work was created during the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States, which hit the middle class hard—a class to whom unbridled capitalism had sold artificial dreams, leading them to their ruin.