Martin C. de Waal is a Dutch artist who uses his modeling experience and his body as a means to his art. By shifting the boundaries of self alteration artist persuades his audience to rethink their opinions and reduce prejudice when it comes to physical appearances, and he does so by using fashion imagery. Performances such as staged interviews, fake magazine articles, edited proofs of his physical mutations are part of artist’s work in which he explores notions of human identity, gender and the self. Constant reinvention is a part of de Waal’s practice, which plastic surgery is a common medium for: a few years ago artist underwent and eight and a half hour surgery to alter his face. The procedure has been photographically documented and showcased at various galleries. By using various alter egos such as VJ and Martin Duval and providing false information about himself, de Waal confronts the audience with usual questions: ‘How can we understand ourselves?’, ‘How do we deal with our insecurities in the contemporary consumer society?.
De Waal’s glamorous digital compositions present characters overly preoccupied with their own image, busy capturing viewer’s attention and imitate stereotypical attitude created by media. By first seducing us these works function as wires in the web of gaze that structure power relationships in contemporary society. Martin C. de Waal’s works symbolize a glamorous and self-mocking return of the repressed, altered visions of the same.

-text by Anny Baranova