Beauty Community, 2019
wall painting, 550 × 240 cm

Conceived for No Righteous Left Among The Living, 5 December 2019 – 18 January 2020, COMA, Sydney

Launched in 2017, pop star Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty makeup range gained popularity for its inclusive palettes, particularly those of its foundation range. Featuring a then-unprecedented 40 shades, it embraced a diverse range of customers – particularly those of non-European descent – whose needs had hitherto limited their participation in many products on the market. Since then, it is reported, many established makeup ateliers have updated their offerings to include wider shade ranges to flesh out long-neglected gaps in the beauty market.

Inspired by this ostensible evolution, the artist analysed the website of Sephora, an international cosmetics retailer and Fenty Beauty stockist, to undertake a survey. Across 32 makeup brands and more than 100 foundation products, he counted over 1,700 individual colour shades. Each of these shades was then meticulously sorted into 16 colour groups – the number of shades divided by the number of products – that were selected from the Fenty range to reflect an evenly distributed foundation spectrum.

The resulting work, Beauty Community – a wall painting of stripes of graduating colour and varying thickness – is a kind of inclusivity vs diversity infographic which evidences both diversity and disparity. It is a visual representation of an industry and community whose makeup might never be equal or complete.

Photos: Anthony Hodgkinson.
Artwork in foreground: Cybele Cox