Manhattam

Vermibus Returns to NYC to Dissolve Concepts of Beauty

February 15, 2016 Artists

The emancipation of the proletariat will be at its own hands!

Just thought we’d announce something vaguely Marxist on Presidents Day to get your attention, since the masses are awakening to the idea of a democratic socialist as a possibly viable Presidential candidate. Ah, but we citizens are now deep in the stew of consumerism, quite cut off from the means of production. Now we city people just buy stuff, and sell stuff.

Vermibus (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Part of that selling, especially when it comes to beauty and fashion, is to create obsolescence. Integral to the street messaging is to continually insult and degrade the passerby and plant insecurity about our appearance and physical attributes in our minds, ensuring that we never actually are good enough until we buy this new shirt, blouse, lipstick, purse, watch, cologne, sunglasses, sneakers, underwear.

Now as New York’s fashion week is underway with new looks for next fall and winter, street artist Vermibus continues to mount his personal DIY full frontal attack on beauty culture and fashion, one street poster at a time.

The Situationists of the 1960s would likely smiled at his brand of détournement, pranking the everpresent models who belittle you as you walk in public. Ironically in New York people are so focused on the game of keeping their jobs and their rents and their social lives that they pass right by Vermibus in broad daylight as he replaces these ads with his dissolved/repainted ones.

Some curious folks stop to watch as he replaces the gorgeous healthy wealthy young people who have fabulous lives and smooth complexions with these brutal and stylized grotesques. It’s like a jolt to the commercial streetscape in the frigid winter. The subtle changes are a curiosity that brings out the cell phone for a quick shot and a question to a companion. Then they hurriedly clop up the sidewalk to the next appointment.

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