PRETTY WEIRD

In PRETTY WEIRD, Hadley tackles the ever-pervasive dichotomy of conventional beauty standards and eccentricities that live inside her. The result is an ode to surrealism which isolates and highlights the beauty of the eerily contrived, all amidst Greece’s visual and audible traditionality. At once a reflection of the artist's experience with conformity as well as a conscious mockery of it, Rosenbaum elegantly examines the use of photography for the purposes of shaping perception and delineating emotion with a focus on the question: What makes us trust normalcy? Rosenbaum makes use of candy color palettes and natural light against the dreamy background of Hydra, Greece while rooting surrealist elements in the actuality of her work– implementing cheeky adornments sourced from the island and purposefully placed in the scene, she challenges and reclaims what she sees as beautiful. The images are amusing—almost like a private joke between the artist and the viewer about the absurdity of the human condition. Surrealism grants great significance to emotions and concerns that have long been considered too feminine or trivial to be taken seriously by the wider art world. Rosenbaum’s images subvert these assumptions with an open invitation for the viewer to engage with more nuanced portrayals of the female body in relation to the systems that govern them.