For this 3 week project, I was briefed to tackle a hatred I had. My appearance was something that affects me daily and something I constantly wanted to change about myself, so I chose this as the subject of my interrogation. I explored ideas of changing eye colour, Photoshopping appearances, creating digital face filters, creating physical masks as real-life Instagram filters and more.

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As this was a 3-week project, I decided to focus on a specific feature- my teeth. I disliked my teeth because I felt they were uneven, stained and disproportionate. Therefore, I wanted to see how I could hack this hatred.

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I began to analyse my teeth as an object, and studied tooth alteration throughout history. I found that there are many ways that teeth have been decorated through different cultures- for example black tooth-staining in Japan, crystal tooth replacement in Ancient Mayan cultures and Grillz popularised through American hip hop.

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I began to consider how I could decorate my teeth in my own way. I began by applying small crystals to my retainer, and eventually started to practice wearing them out in public, for which I received positive feedback from my peers. I decided to go bigger, adding fake piercings to my teeth and 3-dimensional pieces. Eventually, the practice of showing my teeth became more comfortable. I decided to treat this practice more extremely- adding pearls, large crystals and stickers to my teeth. I photographed them and shared them online, to extremely positive responses.

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This short project definitely improved my outlook on my own teeth and made me dislike them less. The fact that I was drawing attention to them and sharing them with others was a huge factor in this. It was a significant step for me and it changed my mentality towards my own beauty and expression. I wanted to challenge myself in the future to apply this process to other people, which I eventually did with my graduate project, Beauty 2020.