Fair & Lovely: Beauty Lies in Nepal

Fair & Lovely: Beauty Lies in Nepal, a photo exhibition by Liz Lance

Indigo Gallery cordially invites you to the photo exhibition: Fair & Lovely, Beauty Lies in Nepal by Liz Lance on Friday May 29, 2009 at 5:30 pm
at Indigo Gallery in Naxal.

To be opened by the United States Ambassador to Nepal
Her Excellency Ms. Nancy Powell

For nine months, Fulbright Scholar Liz Lance has been submerged in a study of mass media affecting beauty, body image and femininity in young women in Nepal. She sought to understand the ways that mass media consumption has affected Nepal’s changing standards of beauty. Informed by years of academic research, many hours of interviews and relationships built with young women who shared their lives, Liz captured their ideas about beauty and body image in the photographs presented in this exhibition.

Three young women are highlighted in this exhibition: one from rural Eastern Nepal who struggled to survive alone in Kathmandu, with shifting body image and confidence levels; a young singer who ramps up her sex appeal for the benefit of a music career, though remaining a traditional Nepali girl at heart; and a record-setting professional mountain biker with a body that brought her success in a male-dominated field, hides her muscles to maintain her femininity. The explosion of beauty contests and beauty parlors across Nepal are captured, which suggests how women perceive empowerment through beautification and the associated quandary of exploitation.

This exhibition tells a poignant story of changing mores amongst young women in Nepal, without judgment, and with compassion.
Gallery hours daily 8:00am to 6:00pm
4413-580

About the Artist:
Liz Lance holds a bachelor’s degree in South Asian Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and has completed post-baccalaureate coursework in Nepali language, literature and culture at Tribhuvan University’s Bhishwa Bhasha campus in Nepal. Liz has also completed graduate work in documentary photography at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine, and was a participant at the Missouri Photo Workshop in 2007. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to undertake this photographic project. Liz begins her master’s studies in journalism at the University of Missouri in 2009.