Michelle Murphy: Responsive Beauty

Responsive Beauty, a photography exhibition by Michelle Murphy, explores the complexities of creating abstract work that is social-political in content. 

Murphy’s series features beauty products as art materials and considers the triangular relationship between consumer culture, the beauty industry, and the wage disparity between genders. The resulting images reveal the capacity of cosmetics to function as both a metaphor and a consumable object. Murphy is a Chicago-based artist who has studied at the Art Institute and worked as a photographer for NASA for more than a decade.

Exhibition overview from museum website