What's the Matter, Beautiful?

If there were punk Latina editors at Cosmopolitan, they might turn out images like Sylvia Ji's paintings. But no fashion mag we've ever seen captures women with power vectors shooting out their eyes as strong as the ones in Ji's portraits. A surprising number of people have tattoos of her images — all are faithful representations of the artist's calmly hypercolored death-maidens. Throw masterful Día de los Muertos skull facepaint on a Suicide Girl and royally piss her off: This is the basic feel of Ji's paintings. These women: Are they dead? Are they feminist? La Malinche? La Llorona? Clearly, something is not right with them — almost as if being gorgeous were not a cure-all, wouldn't protect you from death and rot, and might put you in danger's way so you better get tough fast.
June 14-July 12, 2008