The society where I was born and raised, Korea, in a wider range East Asia has a strange standard and stereotypes of beauty for women. They judge and criticize people with the strict standards they set. Although individuals have different values of beauty and styles, if it is different from what people think as common beauty, people say it’s wrong.

 

This social pressure affects not only people’s mental health but also climate change. Social pressure is one of the main reasons for fast fashion and cosmetic business's thriving which brings overuse of plastics and a huge amount of trash.

The theme for this work Visual Catalyst related to global warming from the Backlight photo festival. At first, I didn’t really consider the main theme of global warming and focused on my subjects such as women’s right and wrong beauty standards. But I figured out that cosmetic industries and fast fashion are also one of the reasons for global warming and I connected these with the issues that I wanted to talk about.

I put lipstick on my face, wrote about the insane beauty standard and my experiences from other people. I wanted to describe how women such as me living with pressure from those society’s ridiculous wishes. And this unhealthy trend brings a mess of problems mentally and even environmentally. 

Seyoon Yoon is an artist who studies Fine Art in Tampere, Finland. Born and lived 20 years in Seoul, South Korea, she moved to Finland in 2018 for the first time. 

As a child, Seyoon had plenty of opportunities to be close to art. She had a huge influence from her father who is an orchestra conductor. From her young age, she had liked art as her favorite activities and hobby. Her favorite mediums are photography and drawing with dry mediums. Before, her most interest was painting with watercolor for a long time. 

But during her university studies, she felt drawn to photography strongly. She found that photography is a great vehicle that is able to speak her voice most clearly. She likes to take the natural life scene of her surrounding environment. Also, currently, she is interested in social issues.