🔨 Medium: Magazine cutouts, glue, acrylic paint
🏆 Awards:

• Scholastic Art & Writing Award – National Silver Medal (2015)

• Gold Key – Mixed Media Category (2015)

Inspired by the Corpse Flower (Amorphophallus titanum)—a rare bloom at The Huntington Library, where I volunteered—this piece explores the contrast between inner and outer beauty.

From afar, the Corpse Flower is strikingly beautiful and vibrant, but up close, it emits an overwhelming, pungent odor—challenging conventional perceptions of beauty.

I constructed the flower using cutouts of commercialized beauty symbols—cosmetics, fashion, and luxury items—shaping them into the form of the bloom. This juxtaposition questions:
💭 What is beauty? Is it only what we see? Can we look beyond surface-level appearances to recognize deeper truths?

Memento mori — a reminder that beauty fades, but essence endures.