MIMÉTISME RELATIF - Femme nue, d'après Aslan, 1973-1976

Drawing on the feminist movements and Pop art, in 1973 Dorothée Selz made Mimétisme relatif, a series of works that uses humour and the spirit of critique to address the seductive image of women in fashion magazines and advertising. Selz builds photographic diptychs by juxtaposing images taken from commercials with photographs of herself, thus emphasising the artificiality of women’s images as constructed by the media. The brightly coloured and sinuous frames evoke cake decorations. While feminism denounced the media’s idealisation and objectification of the female body, by appropriating the popular imagination Selz rejects these icons while ironically imitating them.