A Beauty Centre 2017 @ Juming Museum | Taiwan

We find revisions and inversions of these very issues in the Singapore-based sculptor Yeo Chee Kiong’s solo exhibition A Beauty Centre, sited in Juming Museum, Taiwan, which is, significantly, a sculptor’s museum founded by the Taiwanese sculptor Ju Ming, known for his abstract-angular solid figures in classical ‘Taichi’ poses. As its name suggests, A Beauty Centre is curated as a tongue-in-cheek pseudo-spa experience, where the viewer participates in ‘self-improving’ activities, being given space and time to reflect on their own ideals, as well as contemporary ‘self-enhancement’ obsessions, from fitness and body ‘sculpting’, and the breathless race to achieve ‘mindfulness’, to flaunting a sense of a self-loved self. The exhibition is navigated via ‘spa-zones’ with names like ‘We detoxify Inner Self’; ‘Future Weapon’; ‘The Healing Room’; ‘We Stop Time’; ‘I am Goddess’; ‘Vague Vogue’; ‘A Beauty Dining Club’; ‘The Cosmos Energy Picnic Program’, and ‘Look Good Naked’. Quite a ‘work-out’ in one exhibition!