Section outline

  • Painting by London-based Chinese artist Xu Yang, depicting the artist in period dress and pink wing painting a self-portrait

    Xu Yang, Perhaps We are All Fictions in the Eye of the Beholder (2021). Oil on linen.

    This painting is on display at the Wellcome Collection. As the wall text explains, "This is the first of an ongoing series of self-portraits by London-based Chinese artist Xu Yang. It references the practice of female portrait painters, especially Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842), whose work epitomised French beauty ideals of her day. Yang identifies with women in history restricted by social circumstances, while finding liberation in contemporary drag culture. Combining her inspirations with heightened experiences of racism during the pandemic, she asserts her agency to reconstruct self-identity and redefine beauty continuously through therapeutic self-portrait-making." If you'd like to learn more about the work, listen to artist Xu Yang discuss her painting here.


    “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder”, we are often told. Or to put it in Shakespeare's words, “Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye” (Love's Labours Lost).

    What comfort we are to take from such an expression is still unclear, especially in a world where to be beautiful often confers a form of power.

    In 2024, conversations about beauty continue and have never felt more necessary, especially in an age of selfies and cosmetic surgery. Fortunately, our understanding about the relationship between beauty and power has become more sophisticated and nuanced. 

    This module begins, therefore, by putting a spotlight on Beauty as an entry point for a critical engagement with past and present debates on gender and politics. 

    This theme will be explored in our first lecture (What is Gender) and will be followed in Week 3 by a visit (during seminar time) to the Wellcome Collection’s temporary exhibition, The Cult of Beauty. 

    While the contributions you’ll encounter are predominantly taken from writings by feminist scholars, I trust the questions and issues will speak to you all, regardless of how you identify.

    The following reading list brings together a range of perspectives and will be extremely useful when preparing for your visit to the exhibition and your first assignment.



    • Wellcome Collection, The Cult of Beauty Visual Story URL
    • Wellcome Collection, The Cult of Beauty Audio Guide URL

      The audio guide contains the following tracks:

      1. Introduction to access resources
      2. Curator Janice Li introduces ‘The Cult of Beauty’ exhibition
      3. Historian Jennifer M. Rampling on the Ripley Scroll
      4. Professor Caroline Vout on the Esquiline Venus and Sleeping Hermaphroditus
      5. Writer Emma Dabiri discusses ‘The Game of Goose’
      6. Writer Emma Dabiri on ‘Racialised whiteness’
      7. Curator Janice Li on An Algorithmic Gaze II by Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm and the ARTificial Mind studio
      8. Writer Emma Dabiri on the ‘Hairstyles’ series by photographer J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere
      9. Artist Xu Yang on her painting ‘Perhaps We are all Fictions in the Eye of the Beholder’
      10. Artist Kimberley Burrows and cosmetic scientist Gabriela Daniels discuss accessibility and beauty
      11. Curator Janice Li introduces the Beauty Sensorium
      12. Artist Eszter Magyar (Makeupbrutalism) on her commission 'It makes no sense to be beautiful if no one is ugly'
      13. Artist Shirin Fathi on her work The Disobedient Nose
      14. Curator E-J Scott on the Museum of Transology
      15. Curator Janice Li introduces the film ‘Permissible Beauty’
      16. Curator Janice Li introduces the sculpture ‘(Almost) all of my dead mother’s beautiful things’ by the artist Narcissister
      17. Curator Janice Li introduces the installation ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, Beauty unravelled in the virtual scroll’ by Xcessive Aesthetics


    • Naomi Wolf (1991) Chapter 1: The Beauty Myth File
      766.5 KB
    • Wellcome Collection, The Cult of Beauty : Captions and transcripts URL