MISShapes

“Beauty will be convulsive, or it will not be at all”

―André Breton, Nadja, 1928

MISShapes is a monochrome series that examines how the female “social body” is constructed within contemporary image culture. The work emerges as a response to an inherited gaze shaped by media, culture, and lived experience. Through advertising and mass media, the female body is fragmented into parts and reduced to isolated forms, reinforcing narrow ideals of beauty while fuelling cycles of desire, anxiety, and consumption.

Approaching the body as a landscape of shapes and textures, the work uses light as a sculptural tool to shift culturally coded fragments of the female body into abstraction. Familiar forms become unstable, oscillating between recognition and distortion.

Through this process of visual deconstruction, MISShapes challenges inherited ideals of classical beauty, reimagining the female form as fluid, fragmented, and resistant to fixed definition.

Photograph of female legs in fishnet stockings and stilettos positioned apart in a graphic composition from the series MISShapes by Beatriz Perez.

Close-up photograph of a female body wearing fishnet stockings forming abstract patterns from the conceptual photography series MISShapes by Beatriz Perez.

Abstract photograph of red-toned female legs against a dark background from the series MISShapes by Beatriz Perez.

Abstract photographic study of a female torso shaped by dramatic light and shadow from the series MISShapes by Beatriz Perez.

Sculptural photograph of a female torso illuminated with directional light from the series MISShapes by Beatriz Perez.

Abstract photograph of the female body illuminated in red light, exploring form and texture from the series MISShapes by Beatriz Perez.

Abstract photograph of female legs illuminated in red and blue light from the conceptual photography series MISShapes by Beatriz Perez.

Abstract photograph of a female ribcage forming geometric shadows through sculptural lighting from the series MISShapes by Beatriz Perez.

Close-up photograph of female collarbones highlighted by sculptural lighting from the series MISShapes by Beatriz Perez.

Abstract photograph of female collarbones forming triangular shapes through shadow and light in the series MISShapes by Beatriz Perez.

Side portrait photograph of a female face illuminated in red light from the conceptual photography series MISShapes by Beatriz Perez.

Close-up photograph of female legs wearing fishnet stockings and stilettos in a sculptural body study from the series MISShapes by Beatriz Perez.

Credits

Photography, Art Direction & Model: Beatriz Perez

Photographer Assistant: Shabbab Khan

Selected Reviews

“This is a moody and incisive group of images in this selection. These deconstructions push the boundaries of classical beauty and abstract the female form into new parts. I enjoy that you are denying the viewer the satisfaction of it being what one might want it to be."

— LensCulture Reviewer

"Perez shows “a circularity where women are ‘sold back’ to themselves" in glossy red, like the magazine pages which entice us to believe the unrealistic hype which surrounds the female form in the media. Her critique through female body parts seduce & scare in equal measure."

— Laura Noble, LA Noble Gallery Director

“You have found a way to balance the pleasure and the critique in your body images, creating a work of fascination, but one which interrogates the viewer and seeks to position within the debates around the idealisation of the female body, and the cultural burden and damage it creates”.

— David Bate, Artist, Writer, Co-founder photographies Journal

“Your images are beautiful without being overtly sexy. You are making an abstraction from an ordinary, recognizable form. The photographs appear as abstract sculpture, graceful and elegant. The eye travels around a wonderful landscape of shape and texture.”

— LensCulture Editorial Reviewer