Leaving Wonderland - An investigation of capitalist visual culture in public spaces through design in relation to female sexuality

Sammanfattning: Capitalist visual culture in public spaces have a significant impact on female sexuality by perpetuating unrealistic, sexualizing and objectifying representations of women. Visual media such as advertising, branding, and other forms of corporate messaging are used to promote the ideas and values of capitalism. Among many, the glorification of consumerism, competition, and perfectionism are the values capitalism promotes and these are the forms in which it is accountable for setting unrealistic standards for female sexuality. Leaving Wonderland explores how the capitalist visual culture in public spaces and female sexuality can be challenged through design. This project focuses on revealing the hidden intertwined connections of capitalism, design, and female sexuality together with how (my) perfectionism is linked and hijacked the project. It is aiming to re-think what female sexuality — sexual feelings and thoughts, attraction and behavior towards others, sexual values, sexual orientation, and sexual identity — is and can be. In collaboration with myself and my body, I created a design project that aims to challenge the perfectionist norms of female sexuality in the capitalist system. The outcome of the project is non-creation and destruction — torn apart pieces of desperate experiments which were initially trying to be perfect. Leaving Wonderland is the result of struggles under perfectionist ideologies. The material outcome of the project aims to challenge the harmful stereotypes of female sexuality through imperfect and destroyed pieces of design to open discussions about escaping from our current fabricated reality